Skip to main content

Full text of "Famous givers and their gifts"

See other formats 


FANOUS-GIVERS-rS-GlFTS 



; i ' i ' i'i' a 'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'ihr.' l hr,i,i,»,i,i|i l i,i,i,i,i l i,i,i,rrrrri l i ,i. i , i l i 



LIBEAEY 



Stom Agricultural College 



Class ,\V..2fcSfeOCWfe! 
(Date ^coSb u.\. y .iS. 2>0| 




i'i'i'i'i'i l i'i'i'i'i'i'iWi'i'iWJ7Ti.iiiii.i.i.i,i.i.i.i.i,ii,i<,i,i,i,i, r r 






Please 

handle this volume 

with care. 

The University of Connecticut 
Libraries, Storrs 



BOOK 360.92.B639 c. 1 

BOLTON # FAMOUS GIVERS AND THEIR 

GIFTS 



3 T153 DOlllflflE 1 




vW 






Mrs. Bolton's Famous Books. 



" Mrs. Bolton never fails to interest and instruct her readers" 

— Chicago Inter-Ocean. 

POOR BOYS WHO BECAME FAMOUS . $1.50 

GIRLS WHO BECAME FAMOUS 1.50 

FAMOUS MEN OF SCIENCE 1.50 

FAMOUS AMERICAN STATESMEN .... 1.50 

FAMOUS ENGLISH STATESMEN 1.50 

FAMOUS AMERICAN AUTHORS 1.50 

FAMOUS ENGLISH AUTHORS 1.50 

FAMOUS EUROPEAN ARTISTS 1.50 

FAMOUS TYPES OF WOMANHOOD .... 1.50 

FAMOUS VOYAGERS AND EXPLORERS . 1.50 

FAMOUS LEADERS AMONG MEN .... 1.50 

FAMOUS LEADERS AMONG WOMEN . . 1.50 

FAMOUS GIVERS AND THEIR GIFTS . . . 1.50 

STORIES FROM LIFE 1.25 



For sale by all booksellers. Send for catalogue. 



THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 
NEW YORK & BOSTON. 




STEPHEN GIRARD. 
(Used by courtesy of Henry A. Ingram.) 



Famous Givers and Their 
Gifts 



BY 

SARAH KNOWLES BOLTON 

AUTHOR OF " POOR BOYS WHO BECAME FAMOUS," " GIRLS WHO BECAME FAMOUS, 
" FAMOUS AMERICAN AUTHORS," " FAMOUS AMERICAN STATESMEN," " FA- 
MOUS MEN OF SCIENCE," " FAMOUS EUROPEAN ARTISTS," " FAMOUS 
TYPES OF WOMANHOOD," " STORIES FROM LIFE," " FROM HEART 
AND NATURE" (POEMS), " FAMOUS ENGLISH AUTHORS," 
"FAMOUS ENGLISH STATESMEN," " FAMOUS VOYA- 
GERS," " FAMOUS LEADERS AMONG WOMEN," 
" FAMOUS LEADERS AMONG MEN," 
" THE INEVITABLE, AND 
OTHER POEMS," ETC. 



For none of us liveth to himself.'' 



NEW YORK : 46 East i 4 th Street 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY 

BOSTON: 100 Purchase Strekt 






Copyright, 1896, 

]',\ Thomas V. CUOWELL & COMPANY 



tSb\^. 



I'v, .w,u MMIY BY C. J. PFTFEK & SON, 
BOSTON, U.S.A. 



TO 

THE ME M ORY 

OF 



tlitant JFrrtirricft Poole, 



THE ORIGINATOR 

OF 

POOLE'S INDEX 



PREFACE. 



While it is interesting to see how men have built 
up fortunes, as a rule, through industry, saving, and 
great energy, it is even more interesting to see how 
those fortunes have been or may be used for the bene- 
fit of mankind. 

In a volume of this*- size, of course, it is impossible to 
speak of but few out of many who have given gene- 
rously of their wealth, both in this country and abroad. 

The book has been written with the hope that others 
may be incited to give through reading it, and may see 
the results of their giving in their lifetime. A sketch 
of George Peabody may be found in "Poor Boys who 
became Famous ; " a sketch of Johns Hopkins in " How 
Success is Won." 

S. K. B. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

John Lowell, Jr., and His Free Lectures .... 1 

Stephen Girard and His College for Orphans . . 29 

-Andrew Carnegie and His Libraries 58 

Thomas Holloway; His Sanatorium and College . 89 

(Charles Pratt and His Institute 108 

Thomas Guy and His Hospital 12S 

Sophia Smith and Her College for Women . . . 153 

James Lick and His Telescope 173 

Leland Stanford and His University 201 

Captain Thomas Coram and His Foundling Asylum, 234 

Henry Shaw and His Botanical Garden .... 247 

James Smithson and the Smithsonian Institution . 258 
Pratt, Lenox, Mary Macrae Stuart, Newberry, 

Crerar, Astor, Reynolds and their Libraries . 2(14 

Frederick H. Rindge and His Gifts 283 

Anthony J. Drexel and His Institute 285 

Philip D. Armour and His Institute 291 

Leonard Case and His School of Applied Science, 297 

Asa Packer and Lehigh University 301 

Cornelius Vanderbilt and Yanderbilt University, 306 

Baron Maurice de Hirsch 312 

ix 



x COy TENTS. 

PAGE 

Isaac Rich ami Boston University 315 

Daniel Ji. Fayerweather and Others 318 

catharine lorillard wolfe 323 

Mary Elizabeth Garrett 326 

Mrs. Anna Ottendorfer 328 

Daniel P. Stone and Valeria G. Stone 331 

Samuel Williston 332 

John F. Slater and Daniel Hand 336 

George T. Angeli 347 

William W. Corcoran 351 

John I). Rockefeller and Chicago University . . 357 



JOHN LOWELL, Jr., 



AND HIS FREE LECTURES. 



There is often something pathetic about a great gift. 
The only son of Leland Stanford dies, and the millions 
which he would have inherited are used to found a noble 
institution on the Pacific Coast. 

The only son of Henry F. Durant, the noted Boston 
lawyer, dies, and the sorrowing father and mother use 
their fortune to build beautiful Wellesley College. 

The only son of Amasa Stone is drowned while at 
Yale College, and his father builds Adelbert College of 
Western Eeserve University, to honor his boy, and bless 
his city and State. 

John Lowell, Jr., early bereft of his wife and two 
daughters, his only children, builds a lasting monument 
for himself, in his Free Lectures for the People, for all 
time, — ■ the Lowell Institute of Boston. 

John Lowell, Jr., was born in Boston, Mass., May 11, 
1799, of distinguished ancestry. His great-grandfather, 
the Bev. John Lowell, was the first minister of Newbury- 
port. His grandfather, Judge John Lowell, was one of 
the framers of the Massachusetts Constitution in 1780. 
He inserted in the bill of rights the clause declaring that 
"all men are born free and equal," for the purpose, as 
he said, of abolishing slavery in Massachusetts; and 

1 



2 JOHN LOWELL, JR. 

offered his services to any slave who desired to establish 
his right to freedom under that clause. His position 
was declared to be constitutional by the Supreme Court 
of the State in 1783, since which time slavery has had 
no legal existence in Massachusetts. In 1781 he was 
elected a member of the Continental Congress, and ap- 
pointed by President Washington a judge of the District 
Court of Massachusetts ; in 1801 President Adams ap- 
pointed him chief justice of the Circuit Court. He was 
brilliant in conversation, an able scholar, and an honest 
and patriotic leader. He was for eighteen years a mem- 
ber of the corporation of Harvard College. 

Judge Lowell had three sons, John, Francis Cabot, and 
Charles. John, a lawyer, was prominent in all good 
work, such as the establishment of the Massachusetts 
General Hospital, the Provident Institution for Savings 
in the City of Boston, the Massachusetts Agricultural 
Society, and other helpful projects. " He considered 
wealth," said Edward Everett, " to be no otherwise val- 
uable but as a powerful instrument of doing good. His 
liberality went to the extent of his means ; and where 
they stopped, he exercised an almost unlimited control 
over the means of others. It was difficult to resist the 
contagion of his enthusiasm ; for it was the enthusiasm 
of a strong, cultivated, and practical mind." 

Francis Cabot, the second son, was the father of the 
noted giver, John Lowell, Jr. Charles, the third son, 
became an eminent Boston minister, and was the father 
of the poet, James Kussell Lowell. On his mother's 
side the ancestors of John Lowell, Jr., were also promi- 
nent. His maternal grandfather, Jonathan Jackson, 
was a generous man of means, a member of the Congress 




JOHN LOWELL, JR. 
(From "The Lowell Institute," by Harriette Knight Sr 
Wolffe & Co., Boston.) 



ith, published by Lamson, 



JOHN LOWELL, JR. 3 

of 1782, and at the close of the Revolutionary War 
largely the creditor of the Commonwealth of Massachu- 
setts. He was the treasurer of the State and of Cam- 
bridge University. 

John Lowell, Jr., must have inherited from such an- 
cestors a love of country, a desire for knowledge, and 
good executive ability. He was reared in a home of 
comfort and intelligence. His father, Francis Cabot, was 
a successful merchant, a man of great energy, strength 
of mind, and integrity of character. 

In 1810, when young John was about eleven years 
old, the health of his father having become impaired, 
the Lowell family went to England for rest and change. 
The boy was placed at the High School of Edinburgh, 
where he won many friends by his lovable qualities, and 
his intense desire to gain information. When he came 
back to America with his parents, he entered Harvard 
College in 1813, when he was fourteen years old. He 
was a great reader, especially along the line of foreign 
travel, and had a better knowledge of geography than 
most men. After two years at Cambridge, he was 
obliged to give up the course from ill health, and seek 
a more active live. When he was seventeen, and the 
year following, he made two voyages to India, and ac- 
quired a passion for study and travel in the East. 

His father, meantime, had become deeply interested 
in the manufacture of cotton in America. The war of 
1812 had interrupted our commerce with Europe, and 
America had been compelled to manufacture many 
things for herself. In 1789 Mr. Samuel Slater had 
brought from England the knowledge of the inventions 
of Arkwright for spinning cotton. These inventions 



4 JOTIN LOWELL, JR. 

were so carefully guarded from the public that it was 
almost impossible for any one to leave England who had 
worked in a cotton-mill and understood the process of 
manufacture. Parliament had prohibited the exporta- 
tion of the new machinery. Without the knowledge of 
his parents, Samuel Slater sailed to America, carrying 
the complicated machinery in his mind. At Pawtucket, 
R.I., he set up some Arkwright machinery from memory, 
and, after years of effort and obstacles, became success- 
ful and wealthy. 

Mr. Lowell determined to weave cotton, and if possible 
use the thread already made in this country. He pro- 
posed to his brother-in-law, Mr. Patrick Tracy Jackson, 
that they put some money into experiments, and try to 
make a power-loom, as this newly invented machine could 
not be obtained from abroad. They procured the model 
of a common loom, and after repeated failures succeeded 
in reinventing a fairly good power-loom. 

The thread obtained from other mills not proving 
available for their looms, spinning machinery was con- 
structed, and land was purchased on the Merrimac River 
for their mills; in time a large manufacturing city gath- 
ered about them, and was named Lowell, for the ener- 
getic and upright manufacturer. 

When the war of 1812 was over, Mr. Lowell knew 
that the overloaded markets of Europe and India would 
pour their cotton and other goods into the United States. 
Up therefore went to Washington in the winter of 1816, 
and after overcoming much opposition, obtained a pro- 
tective tariff for cotton manufacture. "The minimum 
duty on cotton fabrics," says Edward Everett, " the cor- 
ner-stone of the system, was proposed by Mr. Lowell, 



JOHN LOWELL, JR. 5 

and is believed to have been an original conception on 
his part. To this provision of law, the fruit of the 
intelligence and influence of Mr. Lowell, New England 
owes that branch of industry which has made her amends 
for the diminution of her foreign trade ; which has left 
her prosperous under the exhausting drain of her popu- 
lation to the West ; which has brought a market for his 
agricultural produce to the farmer's door ; and which, 
while it has conferred these blessings on this part of the 
country, has been productive of good, and nothing but 
good, to every other portion of it." 

At Mr. Lowell's death he left a large fortune to his 
four children, three sons and a daughter, of whom John 
Lowell, Jr., was the eldest. Like his father, John was 
a successful merchant ; but as his business was carried 
on largely with the East Indies, he had leisure for read- 
ing. He had one of the best private libraries in Boston, 
and knew the contents of his books. He did not forget 
his duties to his city. He was several times a member 
of the Common Council and the Legislature of the State, 
believing that no person has a right to shirk political 
responsibility. 

In the midst of this happy and useful life, surrounded 
by those who were dear to him, in the years 1830 and 
1831, when he was thirty-two years of age, came the 
crushing blow to his domestic joy. His wife and both 
children died, and his home was broken up. He sought 
relief in travel, and in the summer of 1832 made a tour 
of the Western States. In the autumn of the same year, 
November, 1832, he sailed for Europe, intending to be 
absent for some months, or even years. As though he 
had a premonition that his life would be a brief one, and 



6 JOHN LOWELL, JR. 

that he might never return, he made his will before 
leaving America, giving about two hundred and fifty 
thousand dollars — half of his property — " to found 
and sustain free lectures," "for the promotion of the 
moral and intellectual and physical instruction or. educa- 
tion of the citizens of Boston." 

The will provides for courses in physics, chemistry, 
botany, zoology, mineralogy, the literature of our own 
and foreign nations, and historical and internal evidences 
in favor of Christianity. 

The management of the whole fund, with the selection 
of lecturers, is left to one trustee, who shall choose his 
successor ; that trustee to be, " in preference to all others, 
some male descendant of my grandfather, John Lowell, 
provided there be one who is competent to hold the 
office of trustee, and of the name of Lowell." The 
trustees of the Boston Athenaeum are empowered to 
look over the accounts each year, but have no voice in 
the selection of the lecturers. " The trustee," says Mr. 
Lowell in his will, " may also from time to time estaly 
lish lectures on any subject that, in his opinion, the 
wants and taste of the age may demand." 

None of the money given by will is ever to be used 
in buildings; Mr. Lowell probably having seen that 
money is too often put into brick and stone to perpet- 
uate the name of the donor, while there is no income 
for the real work in hand. Ten per cent of the income 
of the Lowell fund is to be added annually to the prin- 
cipal. It is believed that through wise investing the 
fund is already doubled, and perhaps trebled. 

" The idea of a foundation of this kind," says Ed- 
ward Everett, " on which, unconnected with any place 



JOHN LOWELL, JB. 7 

of education, provision is made, in the midst of a large 
commercial population, for annual courses of instruction 
by public lectures, to be delivered gratuitously to all 
who choose to attend them, as far as it is practicable 
within our largest halls, is, I believe, original with Mr. 
Lowell. I am not aware that, among all the munificent 
establishments of Europe, there is anything of this de- 
scription upon a large scale." 

After Mr. Lowell reached Europe in the fall of 1832, 
he spent the winter in Paris, and the summer in Eng- 
land, Scotland, and Ireland. He was all the time prepar- 
ing for his Eastern journey, — in the study of languages, 
and the knowledge of instruments by which to make 
notes of the course of winds, the temperature, atmos- 
pheric phenomena, the height of mountains, and other 
matters of interest in the far-off lands which he hoped 
to enter. Lord Glenelg, the Secretary of State for the 
Colonies, gave him special facilities for his proposed 
tour into the interior of India. 

The winter of 1833 was spent in the southwestern 
part of France, in visiting the principal cities of Lom- 
bardy, in Nice and Genoa, reaching Florence early in 
February, 1834. In Rome he engaged a Swiss artist, an 
excellent draftsman and painter, to accompany him, and 
make sketches of scenery, ruins, and costumes through- 
out his whole journey. 

After some time spent in Naples and vicinity, he 
devoted a month to the island, of Sicily. He writes 
to Princess Galitzin, the granddaughter of the famous 
Marshal Suvorof, whom he had met in Florence : " Clear 
and beautiful are the skies in Sicily, and there is a 
warmth of tint about the sunsets unrivalled even in 



8 JOHN LOWELL, JR. 

Italy. It resembles whal one finds under the tropics; 
and so does the vegetation. It is rich and luxuriant. 
The palm begins to appear: the palmetto, the aloe, 
and the cactus adorn every woodside; the superb 
oleander bathes its roots in almost every brook ; the 
pomegranate and a large species of convolvulus are 
everywhere seen. Tn short, the variety of flowers is 
greater than that of the prairies in the Western States 
of America, though I think their number is less. Our 
rudbeckia is, I think, more beautiful than the chry- 
santhemum coronarium which you see all over Sicily; 
but there are the orange and the lemon."' 

Mr. Lowell travelled in Greece, and July 10 reached 
Athens, "that venerable, ruined, dirty little town," he 
wrote, "of which the streets are most narrow and nearly 
impassable; but the poor remains of whose ancient taste 
in the arts exceed in beauty everything I have yet seen 
in cither Italy, Sicily, or any other portions of Greece." 

Late in September Mr. Lowell reached Smyrna, and 
visited the ruins of Magnesia, Tralles, Xysa, Laodicea, 
Tripolis, and Hierapolis. He writes to a friend in 
America; "I then crossed Mount Messogis in the rain, 
and descended into the basin of the river Hermus, vis- 
ited Philadelphia, the picturesque site of Sardis, with its 
inaccessible citadel, and two solitary but beautiful Ionic 
columns." 

Early in December Mr. Lowell sailed from Sm} T rna in 
a Greek brig, coasting along the islands of Mitylene, 
Samos, Patmos, and Rhodes, arrived in Alexandria in the 
latter part of the month, and proceeded up the river 
Nile. On Feb. 12, 1835, he writes to his friends from 
the top of the great pyramid : — 



jony LOWELL. J 11. 9 

•• The prospect is most beautiful. On the one sidi s 
the boundless desert, varied only by a few low ridges of 
limestone hills. Then you have heaps of sand, and a 
surface of sand reduced to so tine a powder, and so ea- 
sily agitated by the slightest breeze that it almost de- 
serves the name of fluid. Then comes the rich, verdant 
valley of the Xile. studded with villages, adorned with 
- en date-trees, traversed by the Father of Rivers, with 
the magnificent city of Cairo on its banks : but far nar- 
rower than one could wish, as it is bounded, at a dis- 
tance of some fifteen miles, by the Arabian desert, and 
the abrupt calcareous ridge of Mokattam. Immediately 
below the spectator lies the city of the dead, the innu- 
merable tombs, the smaller pyramids, the Sphinx, and 
still farther off and on the same line, to the south, the 
pyramids of Abou Seer. Sakkara. and Pashoor." 

While journeying in Egypt. Mr. Lowell, from the 
effects of the climate, was severely attacked by inter- 
mittent, fever : but partially recovering, proceeded to 
Thebes, and established his temporary home on the 
ruins of a palace at Luxor. After examining many of 
its wonderful structures carved with the names and 
deeds of the Pharaohs, he was again prostrated by ill- 
ness, and feared that he should not recover. He had 
thought out more details about his noble gift to the 
people of Boston ; and, sick and among strangers, he 
completed in that ancient land his last will for the 
good of humanity. "The few "sentences," says Mr. 
Everett, "penned with a tired hand, on the top of a 
palace of the Pharaohs, will do more for human improve- 
ment than, for aught that appears, was done by all of 
that gloomy dynasty that ever reigned." 



10 JOHN LOWELL, JR. 

Mr. Lowell somewhat regained his health, and pro- 
ceeded to Sioot, the capital of Upper Egypt, to lay in 
the stores needed for his journey to Nubia. While at 
Sioot, he saw the great caravan of Darfour in Central 
Africa, which comes to the Nile once in two years, and 
is two or three months in crossing the desert. It usu- 
ally consists of about six hundred merchants, four thou- 
sand slaves, and six thousand camels laden with ivory, 
tamarinds, ostrich-feathers, and provisions for use on 
the journey. 

Mr. Lowell writes in his journal : " The immense 
number of tall and lank but powerful camels was the 
first object that attracted our attention in the caravan. 
The long and painful journey, besides killing perhaps 
a quarter of the original number, had reduced the re- 
mainder to the condition of skeletons, and rendered 
their natural ugliness still more appalling. Their skins 
were stretched, like moistened parchment scorched by 
the fire, over their strong ribs. Their eyes stood out 
from their shrunken foreheads ; and the arched backbone 
of the animals rose sharp and prominent above their 
sides, like a butcher's cleaver. The fat that usually 
accompanies the middle of the backbone, and forms with 
it the camel's bunch, had entirely disappeared. They 
had occasion for it, as well as for the reservoir of water 
with which a bountiful nature has furnished them, to 
enable them to undergo the laborious journey and the 
painful fasts of the desert. Their sides were gored 
with the heavy burdens they had carried. 

" The sun was setting. The little slaves of the cara- 
van had just driven in from their dry pasture of thistles, 
parched grass, and withered herbage these most patient 



JOHN LOWELL, JR. 11 

and obedient animals, so essential to travellers in the 
great deserts, and without which it would be as impos- 
sible to cross them as to traverse the ocean without ves- 
sels. Their conductors made them kneel down, and 
gradually poured beans between their lengthened jaAvs. 
The camels, not having been used to this food, did not 
like it ; they would have greatly preferred a bit of old, 
worn-out mat, as we have found to our cost in the desert. 
The most mournful cries, something between the braying 
of an ass and the lowing of a cow, assailed our ears in 
all directions, because these poor creatures Avere obliged 
to eat what was not good for them ; but they offered no 
resistance otherwise. When transported to the Nile, it 
is said that the change of food and water kills most of 
them in a little time." 

In June Mr. Lowell resumed his journey up the Nile, 
and was again ill for some weeks. The thermometer 
frequently stood at 115 degrees. He visited Khartoom, 
and then travelled for fourteen days across the desert of 
Nubia to Sowakeen, a small port on the western coast 
of the Red Sea. Near here, Dec. 22, he was shipwrecked 
on the island of Dassa, and nearly lost his life. In a 
rainstorm the little vessel ran upon the rocks. " All 'my 
people behaved well," Mr. Lowell writes. " Yanni alone, 
the youngest of them, showed by a few occasional ex- 
clamations that it is hard to look death in the face at 
seventeen, when all the illusions of life are entire. As 
for swimming, I have not strength for that, especially in 
my clothes, and so thorough a ducking and exposure 
might of itself make an end of me." 

Finally they were rescued, and sailed for Mocha, reach- 
ing that place on the 1st of January, 1836. Mr. Lowell 



12 JOHN LOWELL, JR. 

was much exhausted from exposure and his recent ill- 
ness. His last letters were written, Jan. 17, at Mocha, 
while waiting for a British steamer on her way to Bom- 
bay. India, From Mr. Lowell's journal it is seen that 
the steamboat Hugh Lindsay arrived at Mocha from 
Suez, Jan. 20 ; that Mr. Lowell sailed on the 23d, and 
arrived at Bombay, Feb. 10. He had reached the East 
only to die. After three weeks of illness, he expired, 
March 4, 1836, a little less than thirty-seven years of 
age. For years he had studied about India and China, 
and had made himself ready for valuable research ; but 
his plans were changed by an overruling Power in whom 
he had always trusted. Mr. Lowell had wisely provided 
for a greater work than research in the East, the benefits 
of which are inestimable and unending. 

Free public lectures for the people of Boston on the 
Lowell foundation were begun on the evening of Dec. 31, 
L839, by a memorial address on Mr. Lowell by Edward 
Everett, in the Odeon, then at the corner of Federal and 
Franklin Streets, before two thousand persons. 

The first course of lectures was on geology, given by 
that able scientist, Professor Benjamin Silliman of Yale 
College. " So great was his popularity," says Harriette 
Knight Smith in the New England Magazine for Feb- 
ruary. 1895, -that on the giving out of tickets for his 
second course, on chemistry, the following season, the 
eager crowds filled the adjacent streets, and crushed in 
the windows of the < Old Corner Bookstore,' the place of 
distribution, so that provision for the same had to be 
made elsewhere. To such a degree did the enthusiasm 
of the public reach at that time, in its desire to attend 
these lectures, that it was found necessary to open books 



JOHN LOWELL, JR. 13 

in advance to receive the names of subscribers, the num- 
ber of tickets being distributed by lot. Sometimes the 
number of applicants for a single course was eight or 
ten thousand." The same number of the magazine con- 
tains a valuable list of all the speakers at the Institute 
since its beginning. The usual method now is to ad- 
vertise the lectures in the Boston papers a week or more 
in advance ; and then all persons desiring to attend 
meet at a designated place, and receive tickets in the 
order of their coming. At the appointed hour, the 
doors of the building where the lectures are given are 
closed, and no one is admitted after the speaker begins. 
Not long since I met a gentleman who had travelled 
seven miles to attend a lecture, and failed to obtain en- 
trance. Harriette Knight Smith says, " This rule was 
at first resisted to such a degree that a reputable gentle- 
man was taken to the lockup and compelled to pay a fine 
for kicking his way through an entrance door. Finally 
the rule was submitted to, and in time praised and 
copied." 

For seven years the Lowell Institute lectures were 
given in the Odeon, and for thirteen years in Marlboro 
Chapel, between Washington and Tremont, Winter and 
Bromfield Streets. Since 1879 they have been heard in 
Huntington Hall, Boylston Street, in the Rogers Build- 
ing of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

Since the establishment of the free lectures, over five 
thousand have been given to the people by some of the 
most eminent and learned men of both hemispheres, — 
Lyell, Tyndall, Wallace, Holmes, Lowell, Bryce, and 
more than three hundred others. Sir Charles Lyell 
lectured on Geology, Professor Asa Gray on Botany, 



14 JOHN LOWELL, JR. 

Oliver Wendell Holmes on English Poetry of the Nine- 
teenth Century, E. H. Davis on Mounds and Earthworks 
of the Mississippi Valley, Lieutenant M. F. Maury on 
Winds and Currents of the Sea, Mark Hopkins (Presi- 
dent of Williams College) on Moral Philosophy, Charles 
Eliot Norton on The Thirteenth Century, Henry Bar- 
nard on National Education, Samuel Eliot on Evidences 
of Christianity, Burt G. Wilder on The Silk Spider of 
South Carolina, W. D. Howells on Italian Poets of our 
Century, Professor John Tyndall on Light and Heat, 
Dr. Isaac I. Hayes on Arctic Discoveries, Richard A. 
Proctor on Astronomy, General Francis A. Walker on 
Money, Hon. Carroll D. Wright on The Labor Question, 
H. H. Boyesen on The Icelandic Saga Literature, the 
Rev. J. G. Wood on Structure of Animal Life, the Rev. 
H. R. Haweis on Music and Morals, Alfred Russell Wal- 
lace on Darwinism and Some of Its Applications, the 
Rev. G. Frederick Wright on The Ice Age in North Am- 
erica, Professor James Geikie on Europe During and 
after the Ice Age, John Fiske on The Discovery and 
Colonization of America, Professor Henry Drummond on 
The Evolution of Man, President Eliot of Harvard Col- 
lege on Recent Educational Changes and Tendencies. 

Professor Tyndall, after his Lowell lectures, gave the 
ten thousand dollars which he had received for his 
labors in America in scholarships to the University 
of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, and Columbia 
College. 

Mr. John Amory Lowell, a cousin of John Lowell, Jr., 
and the trustee appointed by him, at the suggestion of 
Lyell, a mutual friend, invited Louis Agassiz to come to 
Boston, and give a course of lectures before the Institute 



JOHN LOWELL, JR. 15 

in 1846. He came ; and the visit resulted in the build- 
ing, by Mr. Abbott Lawrence, of the Lawrence Scientific 
School in connection with Harvard College, and the 
retaining of the brilliant and noble Agassiz in this coun- 
try as a professor of zoology and geology. The influ- 
ence of such lectures upon the intellectual growth and 
moral welfare of a city can scarcely be estimated. It 
is felt through the State, and eventually through the 
nation. 

Mr. Lowell in his will planned also for other lectures, 
" those more erudite and particular for students ; " and 
for twenty years there have been " Lowell free courses 
of instruction in the Institute of Technology," given 
usually in the evening in the classrooms of the profess- 
ors. These are the same lectures usually given to 
regular students, and are free alike to men and women 
over eighteen years of age. These courses of instruc- 
tion include mathematics, mechanics, physics, drawing, 
chemistry, geology, natural history, navigation, biology, 
English, French, German, history, architecture, and en- 
gineering. Through the generosity of Mr. Lowell, every 
person in Boston may become educated, if he or she 
have the time and desire. Over three thousand such 
lectures have been given. 

For many years the Lowell Institute has furnished 
instruction in science to the school-teachers of Boston. 
It now furnishes lectures on practical and scientific sub- 
jects to workingmen, under the auspices of the Wells 
Memorial Workingmen' s Institute. 

As the University Extension Lectures carry the col- 
lege to the people, so more and more the Lowell fund is 
carrying helpful and practical intelligence to every nook 



16 JOHN LOWELL, JR. 

and corner of a great city. Young people are stimu- 
lated to endeavor, encouraged to save time in which to 
gain knowledge, and to become useful and honorable 
citizens. When more " Settlements " are established in 
all the waste places, we shall have so many the more 
centres for the diffusion of intellectual and moral aid. 

Who shall estimate the power and value of such a gift 
to the people as that of John Lowell, Jr. ? The Hon. 
Edward Everett said truly, " It will be, from generation 
to generation, a perennial source of public good, — a 
dispensation of sound science, of useful knowledge, of 
truth in its most important associations with the des- 
tiny of man. These are blessings which cannot die. 
They will abide when the sands of the desert shall have 
covered what they have hitherto spared of the Egyptian 
temples ; and they will render the name of Lowell in all- 
wise and moral estimation more truly illustrious than 
that of any Pharaoh engraven on their walls." 

The gift of John Lowell, Jr., has resulted in other 
good work besides the public lectures. In 1850 a free 
drawing-school was established in Marlboro Chapel, and 
continued successfully for twenty-nine years, till the 
building was taken for business purposes. The pupils 
were required to draw from real objects only, through 
the whole course. In 1872 the Lowell School of Prac- 
tical Design, for the purpose of promoting Industrial 
Art in the United States, was established, and the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology assumed the re- 
sponsibility of conducting it. The Lowell Institute bears 
the expenses of the school, and tuition is free to all 
pupils. 

There is a drawing-room and a weaving-room, though 



JOHN LOWELL, JR. 17 

applicants must be able to draw from nature before they 
enter. In the weaving-room are two fancy chain-looms 
for dress-goods, three fancy chain-looms for woollen 
cassimeres, one gingham loom, and one Jacquard loom. 
Samples of brocaded silk, ribbons, alpacas, and fancy 
woollen goods are constantly provided for the school 
from Paris and elsewhere. 

The course of study requires three years ; and students 
are taught the art of designing, and making patterns 
from prints, ginghams, delaines, silks, laces, paper-hang- 
ings, carpets, oilcloths, etc. They can also weave their 
designs into actual fabrics of commercial sizes of every 
variety of material. The school has proved a most help- 
ful and beneficent institution. It is an inspiration to 
visit it, and see the happy and earnest faces of the young 
workers, fitting themselves for useful positions in life. 

The Lowell Institute has been fortunate in its man- 
agement. Mr. John Amory Lowell was the able trustee 
for more than forty years ; and the present trustee, Mr. 
Augustus Lowell, like his father, has the great work 
much at heart. Dr. Benjamin E. Cotting, the curator 
from the formation of the Institute, a period of more 
than half a century, has won universal esteem for his 
ability, as also for his extreme courtesy and kindness. 

John Lowell, Jr., humanly speaking, died before his 
lifework was scarcely begun. The studious, modest boy, 
the thorough, conscientious man, planning a journey to 
Africa and India, not for pleasure merely, but for help- 
fulness to science and humanity, died just as he entered 
the long sought-for land. A man of warm affections, 
he went out from a broken home to die among stran- 
gers. 



18 JOHN LOWELL, JR. 

He was so careful of his moments that, says Mr. 
Everett, "he spared no time for the frivolous pleasures 
of youth ; less, perhaps, than his health required for 
its innocent relaxations, and for exercise." Whether or 
not he realized that the time was short, he accomplished 
more in his brief thirty-seven years than many men in 
fourscore and ten. It would have been easy to spend 
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in houses and 
lands, in fine equipage and social festivities; but Mr. 
Lowell had a higher purpose in life. 

After five weeks of illness, thousands of miles from 
all who were dear to him, on the ruins of Thebes, in an 
Arab village built on the remains of an ancient palace, 
Mr. Lowell penned these words : " As the most certain 
and the most important part of true philosophy appears 
to me to be that which shows the connection between 
God's revelations and the knowledge of good and evil 
implanted by him in our nature, I wish a course of 
lectures to be given on natural religion, showing its con- 
formity to that of our Saviour. 

"For the more perfect demonstration of the truth of 
those moral and religious precepts, by which alone, as 
I believe, men can be secure of happiness in this world 
and that to come,. I wish a course of lectures to be de- 
livered on the historical and internal evidences in favor 
of Christianity. I wish all disputed points of faith and 
ceremony to be avoided, and the attention of the lec- 
turers to be directed to the moral doctrines of the Gos- 
pel, stating their opinion, if they will, but not engaging 
in controversy, even on the subject of the penalty for 
disobedience. As the prosperity of my native land, 
New England, which is sterile and unproductive, must 



JOTIN LOWELL, JR. 19 

depend hereafter, as it has heretofore depended, first 
on the moral qualities, and second on the intelligence 
and information of its inhabitants, I am desirous of try- 
ing to contribute towards this second object also." 

The friend of the people, Mr. Lowell desired that 
they should learn from the greatest minds of the age 
without expense to themselves. It should be an abso- 
lutely free gift. 

The words from the Theban ruins have had their ever 
broadening influence through half a century. What 
shall be the result for good many centuries from now ? 
Tens of thousands of fortunes have been and will be 
spent for self, and the names of the owners will be for- 
gotten. John Lowell, Jr., did not live for himself, and 
his name will be remembered. 

Others in this country have adopted somewhat Mr. 
Lowell's plan of giving. The Hon. Oakes Ames, the great 
shovel manufacturer, member of Congress for ten years, 
and builder of the Union Pacific Eailroad, left at his 
death, May 8, 1873, a fund of fifty thousand dollars 
" for the benefit of the school children of North Easton, 
Mass." The income is thirty-five hundred dollars a 
year, part of which is used in furnishing magazines to 
children — each family having children in the schools 
is supplied with some magazine ; part for an industrial 
school where they are taught the use of tools ; and part 
for free lectures yearly to the school children, adults 
also having the benefit of them. . Thirty or more lec- 
tures are given each winter upon interesting and profit- 
able subjects by able lecturers. 

Some of the subjects already discussed are as fol- 
lows : The Great Yellowstone Park, A Journey among 



20 JOHN LOWELL, JR. 

the Planets, The Chemistry of a Match, Paris, its Gar- 
dens and Palaces, A Basket of Charcoal, Tobacco and 
Liquors, Battle of Gettysburg, The Story of the Jean- 
nette, Palestine, Electricity, Picturesque Mexico, The 
Sponge and Starfish, Sweden, Physiology, History of a 
Steam-Engine, Heroes and Historic Places of the Revo- 
lution, The Four Napoleons, The World's Fair, The 
Civil War, and others. 

What better way to spend an evening than in listen- 
ing to such lectures ? What better way to use one's 
money than in laying the foundation of intelligent and 
good citizenship in childhood and youth ? 

The press of North Easton says, "The influence and 
educational power of such a series of lectures and course 
of instruction in a community cannot be measured or 
properly gauged. From these lectures a stream of 
knowledge has gone out which, we believe, will bear 
fruit in the future for the good of the community. Of 
the many good things which have come from the liber- 
ality of Mr. Ames, this, we believe, has been the most 
potent for good of any." 

Judge White of Lawrence, Mass., left at his death a 
tract of land in the hands of three trustees, which they 
were to sell, and use the income to provide a course of 
not less than six lectures yearly, especially to the indus- 
trial classes. The subjects were to be along the line of 
good morals, industry, economy, the fruits of sin and of 
virtue. The White fund amounts to about one hundred 
thousand dollars. 

Mrs. Mary Hemenway of Boston, who died March 6, 
1894, will always be remembered for her good works, 
not the least of which are the yearly courses of free 



JOHN LOWELL, JR. 21 

lectures for young people at the Old South Church. 
When the meeting-house where Benjamin Franklin was 
baptized, where the town meeting was held after the 
Boston Massacre in 1770, and just before the tea was 
thrown overboard in 1773, and which the British troops 
used for a riding-school in 1775, — when this historic 
place was in danger of being torn down because busi- 
ness interests seemed to demand the location, Mrs. 
Hemenway, with other Boston women, came forward in 
1876 to save it. She once said to Mr. Larkin Dunton, 
head master of the Boston Normal School, " I have just 
given a hundred thousand dollars to save the Old South; 
yet I care nothing for the church on the corner lot. 
But, if I live, such teaching shall be done in that old 
building, and such an influence shall go out from it, as 
shall make the children of future generations love their 
country so tenderly that there can never be another 
civil war in this country." 

Mrs. Hemenway was patriotic. When asked why she 
gave one hundred thousand dollars to Tilest'on Normal 
School in Wilmington, N.C., — her maiden name was 
Tileston, — and thus provide for schools in the South, she 
replied, " When my country called for her sons to defend 
the flag, I had none to give. Mine was but a lad of twelve. 
I gave my money as a thank-offering that I was not called 
to suffer as other mothers who gave their sons and lost 
them. I gave it that the children of this generation 
might be taught to love the flag their fathers tore down." 

In December, 1878, Miss C. Alice Baker began at the 
Old South Church a series of talks to children on New 
England history, between eleven and twelve o'clock on 
Saturdays, which she called, "The Children's Hour." 



22 JOHN LOWELL, JR. 

From the relics on the floor and in the gallery, telling 
of Colonial times, she riveted their attention, thus show- 
ing to the historical societies of this country how easily 
they might interest and profit the children of our public 
schools, if these were allowed to visit museums in small 
companies with suitable leaders. 

From this year, 1878, the excellent work has been car- 
ried on. Every year George Washington's birthday is 
appropriately celebrated at the Old South Meeting-house, 
with speeches and singing of national patriotic airs by 
the children of the public schools. In 1879 Mr. John 
Eiske, the noted historical writer, gave a course of lec- 
tures on Saturday mornings upon The Discovery and 
Colonization of America. These were followed in suc- 
ceeding years by his lectures on The American Revolu- 
tion, and others that are now published in book form. 
These were more especially for the young, but adults 
seemed just as eager to hear them as young persons. 

Regular courses of free lectures for young people were 
established in the summer of 1883, more especially for 
those who did not leave the city during the long summer 
vacations. The lectures are usually given on Wednes- 
day afternoons in July and August. A central topic is 
chosen for the season, such as Early Massachusetts His- 
tory, The War for the Union, The War for Independence, 
The Birth of the Nation, The American Indians, etc. ; 
and different persons take part in the course. 

With each lecture a leaflet of four or eight pages is 
given to those who attend, and these leaflets can be 
bound at the end of the season for a small sum. " These 
are made up, for the most part, from original papers 
treated in the lectures," says Mr. Edwin D. Mead who 



JOHN LOWELL, JR. 23 

prepares them, " in the hope to make the men and the 
public life of the periods more clear and real." These 
leaflets are very valuable, the subjects being, " The Voy- 
ages to Vinland, from the Saga of Eric the Red," " Marco 
Polo's Account of Japan and Java," " The Death of De 
Soto from the Narrative of a Gentleman of Elvas," etc. 
They are furnished to the schools at the bare cost of 
paper and printing. Mr. Mead, the scholarly author, 
and editor of the New England Magazine, has been 
untiring in the Old South work, and has been the- means 
of several other cities adopting like methods for the 
study of early history, especially by young people. 

Every year since 1881 four prizes, two of forty dol- 
lars, and two of twenty-five dollars each, have been of- 
fered to high school pupils soon to graduate, and also to 
those recently graduated, for the best essays on assigned 
topics of American history. Those who compete and do 
not win a prize receive a present of valuable books in 
recognition of their effort. From the first, Mrs. Hemen- 
way was the enthusiastic friend and promoter of the Old 
South work. She spent five thousand a year, for many 
years, in carrying it forward, and left provision for its 
continuation at her death. It is not too much to say 
that these free lectures have stimulated the study of our 
early history all over the country, and made us more 
earnest lovers of our flag and of our nation. The world 
has little respect for a " man without a country." 

"Breathes there the man with soul so dead 
Who never to himself hath said, 

' This is my own, my native land ! ' 
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned 
As home his footsteps he hath turned 

From wandering on a foreign strand?" 



24 JOHN LOWELL, JR. 

Mrs. Hemenway did not cease her good work with her 
free lectures for young people. It is scarcely easier to 
stop in an upward career than in a downward. When 
the heart and hand are once opened to the world's needs, 
they can nevermore be closed. 

Mrs. Hemenway, practical with all her wealth, be- 
lieved that everybody should know how to work, and 
thus not only be placed above want, but dignify labor. 
She said, " In my youth, girls in the best families were 
accustomed to participate in many of the household af- 
fairs. Some occasionally assisted in other homes. As 
for myself, I read not many books. They were not so 
numerous as now. I was reared principally on house- 
hold duties, the Bible, and Shakespeare." 

Mrs. Hemenway began by establishing kitchen gar- 
dens in Boston, opened on Saturdays. I remember go- 
ing to one of them at the North End, in 1881, through 
the invitation of Mrs. Hemenway' s able assistant, Miss 
Amy Morris Homans. In a large, plain room of the 
"Mission" I found twenty-four bright little girls 
seated at two long tables. They were eager, interesting 
children, but most had on torn and soiled dresses and 
poor shoes. 

In front of each stood a tiny box, used as a table, on 
which were four plates, each a little over an inch wide ; 
four knives, each three inches long, and forks to corre- 
spond ; goblets, and cups and saucers of the same dimin- 
utive sizes. 

At a signal from the piano, the girls began to set the 
little tables properly. First the knives and forks were 
put in their places, then the very small napkins, and 
then the goblets. In front of the " lady of the house " 



JOHN LOWELL, JR. 25 

were set the cups and saucers, spoon-holder, water- 
pitcher, and coffee-pot. 

Then they listened to a useful and pleasant talk from 
the leader ; and when the order was given to clear the 
tables, twenty-four pairs of little hands put the pewter 
dishes, made to imitate silver, into a pitcher, and the 
other things into dishpans, about four or five inches 
wide, singing a song to the music of the piano as they 
washed the dishes. These children also learned to 
sweep and dust, make beds, and perform other house- 
hold duties. Each pupil was given a complete set of 
new clothes by Mrs. Hemenway. 

Many persons had petitioned to have sewing taught in 
the public schools of Boston, as in London ; but there 
was opposition, and but little was accomplished. Mrs. 
Hemenway started sewing-schools, obtained capable 
teachers, and in time sewing became a regular part of 
the public-school work, with a department of sewing in 
the Boston Normal School ; so that hereafter the teacher 
will be as able in her department as another in mathe- 
matics. Drafting, cutting, and fitting have been added 
in many schools, so that thousands of women will be 
able to save expense in their homes through the skill 
of their own hands. 

Mrs. Hemenway knew that in many homes food is 
poorly cooked, and health is thereby impaired. Mr. 
Henry C. Hardon of Boston tells of this conversation 
between two teachers : " Name some one thing that 
would enable your boys to achieve more, and build up 
the school." — "A plate of good soup and a thick slice 
of bread after recess," was the reply. " I could get 
twice the work before twelve. They want new blood." 



26 JOHN LOWELL, JR. 

Mrs. Hemenway started cooking-schools in Boston, 
which she called school kitchens ; and when it was 
found to be difficult to secure suitable teachers, she 
established and supported a normal school of cooking. 
Boston, seeing the need of proper teachers in its future 
work in the schools, has provided a department of cook- 
ing in the city Normal School. 

Mrs. Hemenway believed in strong bodies, aided to 
become such by physical training. She offered to the 
School Committee of Boston to provide for the instruc- 
tion of a hundred teachers in the Swedish system, on 
condition that they be allowed to use the exercises in 
their classes in case they chose to do so. The result 
proved successful, and now over sixty thousand in the 
public schools take the Swedish exercises daily. 

Mrs. Hemenway established the Boston Normal 
School of Gymnastics, from which teachers have gone 
to Radcliffe College, Cambridge ; Bryn Mawr, Pennsyl- 
vania ; Denver, Colorado ; Drexel Institute, Philadel- 
phia ; their average salary being slightly less than one 
thousand dollars, the highest salary reaching eighteen 
hundred dollars. Boston has now made the teaching of 
gymnastics a part of its normal-school work, so that 
every graduate goes out prepared to direct the work in 
the school. Mrs. Hemenway gave generously to aid 
the Boston Teachers' Mutual Benefit Association ; for 
she said, " Nothing is too good for the Boston teachers." 
She was a busy woman, with no time for fashionable 
life, though she welcomed to her elegant home all 
who had any helpful work to do in the world. She 
used her wealth and her social position to help human- 
ity. She died leaving her impress on a great city and 
State, and through that upon the nation. 



JOHN LOWELL, JR. 27 

New York State and City are now carrying out an 
admirable plan of free lectures for the people. The 
State appropriates twenty-five thousand dollars annually 
that free lectures may be given " in natural history, 
geography, and kindred subjects by means of pictorial 
representation and lectures, to the free common schools 
of each city and village of the State that has, or may 
have, a superintendent of free common schools." These 
illustrated lectures may also be given " to artisans, me- 
chanics, and other citizens." 

This has grown largely out of the excellent work done 
by Professor Albert S. Bickmore of the American Mu- 
seum of Natural History, Eighth Avenue and Seventy- 
seventh Street, Central Park, New York. In 1869, when 
the Museum was founded, the teachers of the public 
schools were required to give object-lessons on animals, 
plants, human anatomy, and physiology, and came to the 
Museum to the curator of the department of ethnology, 
Professor Bickmore, for assistance. His lectures, given 
on Saturday forenoons, illustrated by the stereopticon, 
were upon the body, — the muscular system, nervous sys- 
tem, etc. ; the mineral kingdom, — granite, marble, coal, 
petroleum, iron, etc. ; the vegetable kingdom, — ever- 
greens, oaks, elms, etc. ; the animal kingdom, — the sea, 
corals, oysters, butterflies, bees, ants, etc. ; physical 
geography, — the Mississippi Valley, Yellowstone Na- 
tional Park, Mexico, Egypt, Greece, Italy, West Indies, 
etc. ; zoology, — fishes, reptiles, and birds, the whale, 
dogs, seals, lions, monkeys, etc. 

These lectures became so popular and helpful that the 
trustees of the Museum hired Chickering Hall for some 
of the courses, which were attended by over thirteen 



28 JOHN LOWELL, JR. 

hundred teachers each week. Professor Bickmore also 
gives free illustrated lectures to the people on the af- 
ternoons of legal holidays at the Museum, under the 
auspices of the State Department of Public Instruction. 

New York State has done a thing which might well 
be copied in other States. Each normal school of the 
State, and each city and village superintendent of 
schools, may be provided with a stereopticon, all needed 
lantern slides, and the printed lectures of Professor 
Bickmore, for use before the schools. In this way chil- 
dren have object-lessons which they never forget. 

The Museum, in co-operation with the Board of Edu- 
cation of the city of New York, is providing free lec- 
tures for the people at the Museum on Saturday evenings, 
by various lecturers. The Board, under the direction of 
Dr. Henry M. Leipziger, is doing good work in its free 
illustrated lectures for the people in many portions of 
the city. These are given in the evenings, and often at 
the grammar-school buildings, a good use to which to 
put them. Such subjects are chosen as The Navy in the 
Civil War, The Progress of the Telegraph, Life in the 
Arctic Regions, Emergencies and How to Meet Them 
(by some physician), Iron and Steel Ship-building, The 
Care of the Eyes and Teeth, Burns and Scotland, Andrew 
Jackson, etc. Rich and poor are alike welcome to the 
lectures, and all classes are present. 

A city or State that does such work for the people will 
reap a hundred-fold in coming generations. 



STEPHEN GIRARD 

AND HIS COLLEGE FOR ORPHANS 



Near the city of Bordeaux, France, on May 20, 1750, 
the eldest son of Pierre Girard and his wife, Anne Marie 
Laf argue, was born. The family were well-to-do ; and 
Pierre was knighted by Louis XV. for bravery on board 
the squadron at Brest, in 1744, when France and Eng- 
land were at war. The king gave Pierre Girard his own 
sword, which Pierre at his death ordered to be placed in 
his coffin, and it was buried with him. Although the 
Girard family were devoted to the sea, Pierre wished to 
have his boys become professional men ; and this might 
have been the case with the eldest son, Stephen, had not 
an accident changed his life. 

When the boy was eight years old, his right eye was 
destroyed. Some wet oyster-shells were thrown upon a 
bonfire, and the heat breaking the shells, a ragged piece 
flew into the eye. To make the calamity worse, his 
playmates ridiculed his appearance with one eye closed ; 
and he became sensitive, and disinclined to play with 
any one save his brother Jean. " 

He was a grave and dignified lad, inclined to be dom- 
ineering, and of a quick temper. His mother tried to 
teach him self-control, and had she lived, would doubt- 
less have softened his nature ; but a second mother 

29 



30 STEPHEN GIRARD. 

coming into the home, who had several children of her 
own, the effect upon Stephen was disastrous. She seems 
not to have understood his nature ; and when he rebelled, 
the father sided with the new love, and bade his son sub- 
mit, or find a home as best he could. 

" I will leave your house," replied the passionate boy, 
hurt in feelings as well as angered. " Give me a ven- 
ture on any ship that sails from Bordeaux, and I will go 
at once, where you shall never see me again." 

A business acquaintance, Captain Jean Courteau, was 
about to sail to San Domingo in the West Indies. Pierre 
Grirard gave his son sixteen thousand livres, about three 
thousand dollars ; and the lad of fourteen, small for his 
age, went out into the world as a cabin-boy, to try his 
fortune. 

If his mother had been alive he would have been 
homesick, but as matters were at present the Girard 
house could not be a home to him. His first voyage 
lasted ten months ; the three thousand dollars had 
gained him some money, and the trip had made him 
in love with the sea. He returned for a brief time 
to his brothers and sisters, and then made five other 
voyages, having attained the rank of lieutenant of the 
vessel. 

When he was twenty-three, he was given authority 
to act as " captain of a merchant vessel," and sailed 
away from Bordeaux forever. After stopping at St. 
Marc's in the island of San Domingo, young Girard 
sailed for New York, which he reached in July, 1774. 
With shrewd business ability he disposed of the articles 
brought in his ship, and in so doing attracted the inter- 
est of a prosperous merchant, Mr. Thomas Randall, who 



STEPHEN GIRARD. 31 

was engaged in trade with New Orleans and the West 
Indies. 

Mr. Eandall asked the energetic young Frenchman to 
take the position of first officer in his ship L'Aimable 
Louise. This resulted so satisfactorily that Girard 
was taken into partnership, and became master of the 
vessel in her trade with New Orleans and the West 
Indies. 

After nearly two years, in May, 1776, Girard was re- 
turning from the West Indies, and in a fog and storm at 
sea found himself in Delaware Bay, and learned that a 
British fleet was outside. The pilot, who had come in 
answer to the small cannon fired from Girard's ship, ad- 
vised against his going to New York, as he would surely 
be captured, the Revolutionary War having begun. As 
he had no American money with him, a Philadelphia 
gentleman who came with the pilot loaned him five dol- 
lars. This five-dollar loan proved a blessing to the 
Quaker City, when in after years she received millions 
from the merchant who came by accident into her bor- 
ders. 

Captain Girard sold his interest in L'Aimable Louise, 
and opened a small store on Water Street, putting into 
it his cargo from the West Indies. He hoped to go. to 
sea again as soon as the war should be over, and con- 
ferred with Mr. Lum, a plain shipbuilder near him on 
Water Street, about building a ship for him. Mr. Lum 
had an unusually beautiful daughter, Mary, a girl of six- 
teen, with black hair and eyes, and very fair complexion. 
Though eleven years older than Mary, Stephen Girard 
fell in love with her, and was married to her, June 6, 
1777, before his family could object, as they soon did 



32 STEPIIEN GIRARD. 

strenuously, when they learned that she was poor and 
below him in social rank. 

About three years after the marriage, Jean visited his 
brother Stephen in America, and seems to have appre- 
ciated the beautiful and modest girl to whom the family 
were so opposed. Henry Atlee Ingrain, LL.B., in his 
life of Girard, quotes several letters from Jean after he 
had returned to France, or when at Cape Francois, San 
Domingo : " Be so kind as to assure my dear sister-in-law 
of my true affection. . . . Say a thousand kind things 
to her for me, and assure her of my unalterable friend- 
ship. . . . Thousands and thousands of friendly wishes 
to your dear wife. Say to her that if anything from 
here would give her pleasure, to ask me for it. I will do 
everything in the world to prove to her my attachment. 
... I send by Derussy the jar which your lovely wife 
filled for me with gherkins, full of an excellent guava 
jelly for you people, besides two orange-trees. He has 
promised me to take care of them. I hope he will, and 
embrace, as well as you, my ever dear Mary." 

Three or four months after his marriage, Lord Howe 
having threatened the city, Mr. Girard took his young 
wife to Mount Holly, KJ., to a little farm of five or 
six acres which he had purchased the previous year 
for five hundred dollars. Here they lived in a one- 
story-and-a-half frame house for over a year, when 
they returned to Philadelphia and he resumed his busi- 
ness. He had decided already to become a citizen of 
the Eepublic, and took the oath of allegiance, Oct. 27, 
1778. 

Mr. Luni at once began to build the sloop which Mr. 
Girard was planning when he first met Mary, and she 



STEPHEN Gill ABB. 33 

was named the Water-Witch. Until she was ship- 
wrecked, five or six years later, Mr. G-irard believed she 
could never cause him loss. Already he was worth over 
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, made by his own 
energy, prudence, and ability; but he lived with great 
simplicity, and was accumulating wealth rapidly. In 
1784 he built his second vessel, named, in compliment to 
Jean, the Two Brothers. 

The next year, 1785, when he was thirty-five years 
old, the great sorrow of his life came upon him. The 
beautiful wife, only a little beyond her teens, became 
melancholy, and then hopelessly insane. Mr. Ingram 
believes the eight years of Mary Girard's married life 
were happy years, though the contrary has been stated. 
Without doubt Mr. Girard was very fond of her, though 
his unbending will and temper, and the ignoring of her 
relatives, were not calculated to make any woman con- 
tinuously happy. Evidently Jean, who had lived in 
the family, thought no blame attached to his brother; 
for he wrote from Cape Francois : " It is impossible to 
express to you what I felt at such news. I do truly 
pity the frightful state I imagine you to be in, above 
all, knowing the regard and love you bear your wife. . . . 
Conquer your grief, and show yourself by that worthy 
of being a man ; for, dear friend, when one has nothing 
with which to reproach one's self, no blow, whatsoever 
it may be, should crush him." 

After a period of rest, Mrs. Girard seemed to recover. 
Stephen and Jean formed a partnership, and the former 
sailed to the Mediterranean on business for the firm. 
After three years the partnership was dissolved by 
mutual consent, Stephen preferring to transact business 



34 STEPHEN GIRA11D. 

alone. As soon as these matters were settled, he and 
his wife were to take a journey to France, which coun- 
try she had long been anxious to visit. Probably the 
family would then see for themselves that the unas- 
suming girl made an amiable, sensible wife for their 
eldest son. 

In the midst of preparations, the despondency again 
returned; and by the advice of physicians, Mrs. G-irard 
was taken to the Pennsylvania Hospital, at Eighth and 
Spruce Streets, Aug. 31, 1790, where she remained till 
her death in 1815, insane for over twenty-five years. 
She retained much of the beauty of her girlhood, lived 
on the first floor of the hospital iu large rooms, had the 
freedom of the grounds, and was " always sitting in the 
sunlight." Her mind became almost a blank ; and when 
the housekeeper came bringing the little daughters of 
Jean, Mrs. Girard scarcely recognized her. 

To add still more to Mr. Girard's sorrow, after his 
wife had been at the hospital several months, on March 
3, 1791, a daughter was born to her, who was named 
for the mother, Mary Girard. The infant was taken 
into the country to be cared for, and lived but a few 
months. It was buried in the graveyard of the parish 
church. 

Bereft of his only child, his home desolate, Mr. 
Girard plunged more than ever into the whirl of busi- 
ness. He built six large ships, naming some of them 
after his favorite authors, — Voltaire, Helvetius, Mon- 
tesquieu, Rousseau, Good Friends, and North America, 
— to trade with China and India, and other Eastern coun- 
tries. He would send grain and cotton to Bordeaux, 
where, after unloading, his ships would reload with 



STEPHEN GIRARD. 35 

fruit and wine for St. Petersburg. There they would 
dispose of their cargo, and take on hemp and iron for 
Amsterdam. From there they would go to Calcutta 
and Canton, and return, laden with tea and silks, to 
Philadelphia. 

Little was known about the quiet, taciturn French- 
man ; but every one supposed he was becoming very rich, 
which was the truth. He was not always successful. 
He says in one of his letters, " We are all the subjects 
of what you call ' reverses of fortune.' The great secret 
is to make good use of fortune, and when reverses come, 
receive them with sang fro id, and by redoubled activ- 
ity and economy endeavor to repair them." His ship 
Montesquieu, from Canton, China, arrived within the 
capes of Delaware, March 26, 1813, not having heard 
of the war between America and England, and was cap- 
tured with her valuable cargo, the fruits of the two 
years' voyage. The ship was valued at $20,000, and 
the cargo over $1G4,000. He immediately tried to ran- 
som her, and did so with $180,000 in coin. ' When her 
cargo was sold, the sales amounted to nearly $500,000, 
so that Girard's quickness and good sense, in spite of 
the ransom, brought him large gains. The teas were 
sold for over two dollars a pound, on account of their 
scarcity from the war. 

Mr. Girarcl rose early and worked late. He spent 
little on clothes or for daily needs. He evidently did 
not care simply to make money ; for he wrote his friend 
Duplessis at New Orleans : " I do not value fortune. 
The love of labor is my highest ambition. ... I ob- 
serve with pleasure that you have a numerous family, 
that you are happy in the possession of an honest for- 



36 STEPHEN GIRABD. 

tune. This is all that a wise man lias a right to wish 
for. As to myself, I live like a galley-slave, constantly 
occupied, and often passing the night without sleeping. 
I am wrapped up in a labyrinth of affairs, and worn out 
with care.*' 

To another he wrote: "When I rise in the morn- 
ing my only effort is to labor so hard during the day 
that when the night comes I may be enabled to sleep 
soundly." He had the same strong will as in his boy- 
hood, but he usually controlled his temper. He kept 
his business to himself, and would not permit his clerks 
to gossip about his affairs. They had to be men of cor- 
rect habits while in his employ. Having some suspi- 
cion of one of the officers of his ship Voltaire, he 
wrote to Captain Bowen : " I desire you not to permit a 
drunken or immoral man to remain on board of your 
ship. Whenever such a man makes disturbance, or is 
disagreeable to the rest of the crew, discharge him 
whenever you have the opportunity. And if any of my 
apprentices should not conduct themselves properly, I 
authorize you to correct them as I would myself. My 
intention being that they shall learn their business, so 
after they are free they may be useful to themselves 
and their country." 

Mr. Girard gave minute instructions to all his employ- 
ees, with the direction that they were to " break owners, 
not orders." Miss Louise Stockton, in " A Sylvan City, 
or Quaint Corners in Philadelphia," tells the follow- 
ing incident, illustrative of Mr. Girard's inflexible rule : 
" He once sent a young supercargo with two ships on 
a two years' voyage. He was to go first to London, 
then to Amsterdam, and so from port to port, selling and 



STEPHEN GIRARD. 37 

buying, until at last he was to go to Mocha, buy coffee, 
and turn back. At London, however, the young fellow 
was charged by the Barings not to go to Mocha, or he 
would fall into the hands of pirates ; at Amsterdam they 
told him the same thing. Everywhere the caution was 
repeated ; but he sailed on until he came to the last port 
before Mocha. Here he was consigned to a merchant 
who had been an apprentice to Girard in Philadelphia; 
and he, too, told him he must not dare venture near the 
Red Sea. 

" The supercargo was now in a dilemma. On one side 
was his master's order ; on the other, two vessels, a val- 
uable cargo, and a large sum of money. The merchant 
knew Girard's peculiarities as well as the supercargo did ; 
but he thought the rule to " break owners, not orders " 
might this time be governed by discretion. ' You'll not 
only lose all you have made/ he said, ' but you'll never 
go home to justify yourself.' 

" The young man reflected. After all, the object of 
his voyages was to get coffee ; and there was ho danger in 
going to Java, so he turned his prow, and away he sailed 
to the Chinese seas. He bought coffee at four dollars a 
sack, and sold it in Amsterdam at a most enormous ad- 
vance, and then went back to Philadelphia in good order, 
with large profits, sure of approval. Soon after he en- 
tered the counting-room Girard came in. He looked at 
the young fellow from under his bushy brows, and his 
one eye gleamed with resentment. " He did not greet him, 
nor welcome him, nor congratulate him, but, shaking his 
angry hand, cried, ' What for you not go to Mocha, sir ? ' 
And for the moment the supercargo wished he had. But 
this was all Girard ever said on the subject. He rarely 



38 STEPHEN GIRABD. 

scolded his employees. He might express his opinion 
by cutting down a salary, and when a man did not suit 
him he dismissed him." 

When one of Girard's bookkeepers, Stephen Simpson, 
apparently with little or no provocation, assaulted a fel- 
low bookkeeper, injuring him so severely about the head 
that the man was unable to leave his home for more than 
a week, Girard simply laid a letter on Simpson's desk 
the next morning, reducing his salary from fifteen hun- 
dred dollars to one thousand per annum. The clerk was 
very angry, but did not give up his situation. When an 
errand-boy was caught in the act of stealing small sums 
of money from the counting-house, Mr. Girard put a 
more intricate lock on the money-drawer, and made no 
comment. The boy was sorry for his conduct, and gave 
no further occasion for complaint. 

Girard believed in labor as a necessity for every human 
being. He used to say, " No man shall be a gentleman 
on my money." If he had a son he should labor. He 
said, " If I should leave him twenty thousand dollars, he 
would be lazy or turn gambler." Mr. Ingram tells an 
amusing incident of an Irishman who applied to Mr. 
Girard for work. " Engaging the man for a whole day, 
he directed the removal from one side of his yard to the 
other of a pile of bricks, which had been stored there 
awaiting some building operations ; and this task, which 
consumed several hours, being completed, he was ac- 
costed by the Irishman to know what should be done 
next. ' Why, have you finished that already ? ' said 
Girard ; < I thought it would take all day to do that. 
Well, just move them all back again where you took 
them from ; that will use up the rest of the day ; ' and 



STEPHEN GIRABD. 39 

upon the astonished Irishman's flat refusal to perform 
such fruitless labor, he was promptly paid and dis- 
charged, Girarcl saying at the same time, in a rather 
aggrieved manner, ' I certainly understood you to say 
that you wanted any kind of work.'" 

Absorbed as Mr. Girard was in his business, cold and 
unapproachable as he seemed to the people of Philadel- 
phia, he had noble qualities, which showed themselves 
in the hour of need. In the latter part of July, 1793, 
yellow fever in its most fatal form broke out in Water 
Street, within a square of Mr. Girard's residence. The 
city was soon in a panic. Most of the public offices 
were closed, the churches were shut up, and people fled 
from the city whenever it was possible to do so. Corpses 
were taken to the grave on the shafts of a chaise driven 
by a negro, unattended, and without ceremony. 

" Many never walked in the footpath, but went in 
the middle of the streets, to avoid being infected in pass- 
ing houses wherein people had died. Acquaintances 
and friends avoided each other in the streets, and only 
signified their regard by a cold nod. The old custom of 
shaking hands fell into such disuse that many shrank 
back with affright at even the offer of a hand. The 
death-calls echoed through the silent, grass-grown streets ; 
and at night the watcher would hear at his neighbor's 
door the cry, i Bring out your dead ! ' and the dead 
were brought. Unwept over, unprayed for, they were 
wrapped in the sheet in which they died, and were hur- 
ried into a box, and thrown into a great pit, the rich and 
the poor together." 

"Authentic cases are recorded," says Henry W. Arey 
in his " Girard College and its Founder," " where parent 



40 STEPHEN GIBABD. 

and child and husband and wife died deserted and 
alone, for want of a little care from the hands of ab- 
sent kindred." 

In the midst of this dreadful plague an anonymous 
call for volunteer aid appeared in the Federal Gazette, 
the only paper which continued to Ik- published. All 
lint three of the " Visitors of the Poor" had died, or 
had Bed from the city. The hospital at Bush Hill 
needed some one to bring order out of chaos, and clean- 
liness out of filth. Two men volunteered to do this 
work, which meant probable death. To the amazement 
of all, one of these was the rich and reticent foreigner, 
Stephen Girard. The other man was Peter Helm. The 
former took the interior of the hospital under his charge. 
For two mouths Mr. Girard spent from six to eight 
hours daily in the hospital, and the rest of the time 
helped to remove the sick and the dead from the in- 
fected districts round about. He wrote to a friend in 
Baltimore: "The deplorable situations to which fright 
and sickness have reduced the inhabitants of our city 
demand succor from those who do not fear death, or 
who at least do not see any risk in the epidemic which 
now prevails here. This will occupy me for some tunc ; 
and if I have the misfortune to succumb, I will have at 
least the satisfaction to have performed a duty which 
we all owe to each other. 1 * 

Mr. Ingram quotes from the United States Gazette of 
dan. 13, 1832, the account of Girard at this time, wit- 
nessed by a merchant who was hurrying by with a, 
camphor-saturated handkerchief pressed to his mouth : 
"A carriage, rapidly driven by a. black servant, broke 
the silence of the deserted and grass-grown street. It 



STEPHEN aiBABB. 41 

stopped before a frame house in Farmer's Row, the 
very hotbed of the pestilence; and the driver, first hav- 
ing hound ii handkerchief over his mouth, opened the 
door of the carriage, and quickly remounted to the box. 
A short, thick-set man stepped from the coach, and 
entered the house. 

" In a minute or two the observer, who stood at a 
safe distance watching the proceedings, heard a shuf- 
fling noise in the entry, and soon saw the visitor emerge, 
supporting, with extreme difficulty, a tall, gaunt, yellow- 
visaged victim of the pestilence. His arm was around 
the waist of the sick man, whose yellow face rested 
against his own, his long, danip, tangled hair mingling 
with his benefactor's, his feet dragging helpless upon 
the pavement. Thus, partly dragging, partly lifted, he 
was drawn to the carriage door, the driver averting his 
face from the spectacle, far from offering to assist, 
After a long and severe exertion, the well man suc- 
ceeded in getting the fever-stricken patient into the 
vehicle, and then entering it himself, the' door was 
closed, and the carriage drove away to the hospital, the 
merchant having recognized in the man who thus risked 
his life for another, the foreigner, Stephen Girard." 

'Twice after this, in 1797 and 1798, when the yellow 
fever again appeared in Philadelphia, Mr. Girard gave 
his time and money to the sick and the poor. 

In January, 1799, he wrote to a friend in France: 
"During all this frightful time I have constantly re- 
mained in the city, and without neglecting my public 
dutie's, I have played a part which will make you smile. 
Would you believe it, my friend, that I have visited as 
many as fifteen sick people in one day, and what will 



42 STEPHEN GIB A ED. 

surprise you still more, I have lost only one patient, an 
Irishman, who would drink a little." 

Busy as a mariner, merchant, and helper of the sick 
and the poor, Mr. Girard found time to aid the Repub- 
lic, to which he had become ardently attached. Besides 
serving for several terms in the City Council, and as 
Warden of the Port for twenty-two years, during the 
war of 1812 he rendered valuable financial aid. In 
1810 Mr. Girard, having about one million dollars in 
the hands of Baring Bros. & Co., London, ordered the 
whole of it to be used in buying stock and shares of 
the Bank of the United States. When the charter of 
the bank expired in 1811, Mr. Girard purchased the 
whole outfit, and opened " The Bank of Stephen Gi- 
rard," with a capital of one million two hundred thou- 
sand dollars. About this time, 1811, an attempt was 
made by two men to kidnap Mr. Girard by enticing 
him into a house to buy goods, then seize him, and 
carry him to a small ship in the Delaware, where he 
would be confined till he had paid the money which 
they demanded. The plot was discovered. After the 
men were arrested, and in prison for several months, 
one was declared insane, and the other was acquitted on 
the ground of comparative ignorance of the plot. 

Everybody believed in Mr. Girard's honesty, and in 
the safety of his bank. He made temporary loans to 
the Government, never refusing his aid. When near the 
close of the war the Government endeavored to float 
a loan of five million dollars, the bonds to bear interest 
at seven per cent per annum, and a bonus offered to 
capitalists, there was so much indifference or fear of 
future payment, or opposition to the war with Great 



STEPHEN GIRARD. 43 

Britain, that only $20,000 were subscribed for. Mr. 
Girard determined to stake his whole fortune to save 
the credit of his adopted country. He put his name 
opposite the whole of the loan still unsubscribed for. 

The effect was magical. People at once had faith in 
the Government, professed themselves true patriots, and 
persisted in taking shares from Mr. Girard, which he 
gave them on the original terms. " The sinews of war 
Avere thus furnished," says Mr. Arey, " public confi- 
dence was restored, and a series of brilliant victories 
resulted in a peace, to which he thus referred in a letter 
written in 1815 to his friend Morton of Bordeaux : 
< The peace which has taken place between this country 
and England will consolidate forever our independence, 
and insure our tranquillity.' " 

Soon after the close of the war, on Sept. 13, 1815, 
word was sent to Mr. Girard that his wife, still insane, 
was dying. Years before, when he found that she was 
incurable, he had sought a divorce, which those who ad- 
mire him most must wish that he had never attempted ; 
and the bill failed. He was now sixty-five, and growing 
old. His life had been too long in the shadow ever to 
be very full of light. 

He asked to be sent for when all was over. Toward 
sunset, when Mary Girard was in her plain coffin, word 
was sent to him. He came with his household, and 
followed her to her resting-place, in the lawn at the 
north front of the hospital. " I shall never forget the 
last and closing scene," writes Professor William Wag- 
ner. " We all stood about the coffin, when Mr. Girard, 
filled with emotion, stepped forward, kissed his wife's 
corpse, and his tears moistened her cheek." 



44 STEPHEN GIRARD. 

She was buried in silence, after the manner of the 
Friends, who manage the hospital. After the coffin 
was lowered, Mr. Girard looked in, and saying to Mr. 
Samuel Coates, " It is very well," returned to his home. 

Mary Girard's grave, and that of another who died in 
1807, giving the hospital five thousand dollars on con- 
dition that he be buried there, are now covered by the 
Clinic Building, erected in 18G8. The bodies were not 
disturbed, as there is no cellar under the structure. As 
a reward for the care of his wife, soon after the burial 
Mr. Girard gave the hospital about three thousand dol- 
lars, and small sums of money to the attendants and 
nurses. It was his intention to be buried beside his 
wife, but this plan was changed later. 

The next year, 1816, President Madison having char- 
tered the second Bank of the United States, there were 
so few subscribers that it was evident that the scheme 
would fail. At the last moment Mr. Girard placed his 
name against the stock not subscribed for, — three mil- 
lion one hundred thousand dollars. Again confidence 
was restored to a hesitating and timid public. Some 
years later, in 1829, when the State of Pennsylvania was 
in pressing need for money to carry on its daily func- 
tions, the governor asked Mr. Girard to loan the State 
one hundred thousand dollars, which was cheerfully 
done. 

As it was known that Mr. Girard had amassed great 
wealth, and had no children, he was constantly besought 
to give, from all parts of the country. Letters came 
from France, begging that his native land be remem- 
bered through some grand institution of benevolence. 

Ambitious though Mr. Girard was, and conscious of 



STEPHEN GIRARD. 45 

the power of money, he had without doubt been saving 
and accumulating for other reasons than love of gain. 
His will, made Feb. 16, 1830, by his legal adviser, Mr. 
William J. Duane, after months of conference, showed 
that Mr. Girard had been thinking for years about the 
disposition of his millions. When persons seemed in- 
quisitive during his life, he would say, " My deeds must 
be my life. When I am dead, my actions must speak 
for me." 

To the last Mr. Girard was devoted to business. 
" When death comes for me," he said, " he will find me 
busy, unless I am asleep in bed. -If I thought I was 
going to die to-morrow, I should plant a tree, neverthe- 
less, to-day." 

His only recreation from business was going daily 
to his farm of nearly six hundred acres, in Passyunk 
Township, where he set out choice plants and fruit- 
trees, and raised the best produce for the Philadelphia 
market. His yellow-bodied gig and stout horse were 
familiar objects to the townspeople, though he always 
preferred walking to riding. 

His home in later years, a four-story brick house, 
was somewhat handsomely furnished, with ebony chairs 
and seats of crimson plush from France, a present from 
his brother Etienne ; a tall writing-cabinet, containing 
an organ given him by Joseph Bonaparte, the brother 
of Napoleon, and the ex-king of Spain and Naples, who 
usually dined with Mr. Girard on Sunday ; a Turkey 
carpet, and marble statuary purchased in Leghorn by his 
brother Jean. The home was made cheerful by his young 
relatives. He had in his family the three daughters of 
Jean, and two sons of Etienne, whom he educated. 



46 STEPHEN GIRABB. 

He loved animals, always keeping a large watch-dog 
at his home and on each of his ships, saying that his 
property was thus much more efficiently protected than 
through the services of those to whom he paid wages. 
He was very fond of children, horses, dogs, and canary- 
birds. In his private office several canaries swung in 
brass cages; and these he taught to sing with a bird 
organ, which he imported from France for that purpose. 

When Mr. Girard was seventy-six years of age a 
violent attack of erysipelas in the head and legs led 
him to confine himself thereafter to a vegetable diet as 
long as he lived. The sight of his one eye finally grew 
so dim that he was scarcely able to find his way about 
the streets, and he was often seen to grope about the 
vestibule of his bank to find the door. On Feb. 12, 
1820, as he was crossing the road at Second and Mar- 
ket Streets, he was struck and badly injured by a 
wagon, the wheel of which passed over his head and cut 
his face. He managed to regain his feet and reach his 
home. While the doctors were dressing the wound and 
cleansing it of the sand, he said, " Go on, Doctor, I am 
an old sailor ; I can bear a good deal." 

After some months he was able to return to his bank ; 
but in December, 1831, nearly two years after the acci- 
dent, an attack of influenza, then prevailing, followed 
by pneumonia, caused his death. He lay in a stupor 
for some days, but finally rallied, and walked across the 
room. The effort was too great, and putting his hand 
against his forehead, he exclaimed, " How violent is 
this disorder! How very extraordinary it is!" and 
soon died, without speaking again, at five o'clock in the 
afternoon of Dec. 2G, 1831, nearly eighty-two } T ears old. 



STEPHEN GIRARD. 47 

He was given a public funeral by the city which he 
had so many times befriended. A great concourse of 
people gathered to watch the procession or to join it, all 
houses being closed along the route, the city officials 
walking beside the coffin carried in an open hearse. 
So large a funeral had never been known in Phila- 
delphia, said the press. The body was taken to the 
Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church, and placed in 
the vault of Baron Henry Dominick Lallemand, General 
of Artillery under Napoleon L, who had married the 
youngest daughter of Girard's brother Jean. Mr. Gi- 
rard was born in the Romish Church, and never severed 
his connection, although he attended a church but rarely. 
He liked the Friends, and modelled his life after their 
virtues ; but he said it was better for a man to die in 
the faith in which he was born. He gave generously 
to all religious denominations and to the poor. 

When Mr. Girard's will was read, it was apparent 
for what purpose he had saved his money. He gave 
away about $7,500,000, a remarkable record for a youth 
who left home at fourteen, and rose from a cabin-boy to 
be one of the wealthiest men of his time. 

The first gift in the will, and the largest to any ex- 
isting corporation, was $30,000 to the Pennsylvania 
hospital where Mary Girard died and was buried, the 
income to be used in providing nurses. To the Institu- 
tion for the Deaf and Dumb, Mr. Girard left $20,000 ; 
to the Philadelphia Orphan Asylum, $10,000 ; public 
schools, $10,000 ; to purchase fuel forever, in March 
and August, for distribution in January among poor 
white housekeepers of good character, the income from 
$10,000 ; to the Society for poor masters of ships and 



48 STEPHEN GIRARD. 

their families, $10,000 ; to the poor among the Masonic 
fraternity of Pennsylvania, $20,000 ; to build a school- 
house at Passyunk, where he had his farm, $6,000 ; to 
his brother Etienno, and to each of the six children of 
this brother, $5,000 ; to each of his nieces from $10,000 
to $60,000 ; to each captain of his vessels $1,500, and 
to each of his housekeepers an annuity or yearly sum 
of $500, besides various amounts to servants ; to the 
city of Philadelphia, to improve her Delaware Eiver 
front, to pull down and remove wooden buildings within 
the city limits, and to widen and pave Water Street, 
the income of $500,000 ; to the Commonwealth of Penn- 
sylvania, for internal improvements by canal navigation, 
$300,000 ; to the cities of New Orleans and Philadel- 
phia, " to promote the health and general prosperity of 
the inhabitants," 280,000 acres of land in the State 
of Louisiana. 

The city of Philadelphia has been fortunate in her 
gifts. The Elias P>oudinot Fund, for supplying the 
poor of the city with fuel, furnished over three hundred 
tons of coal last year ; " and this amount will increase 
annually, by reason of the larger income derived from 
the 12,000 acres of land situated in Centre County, the 
property of this trust." The investments and cash bal- 
ance on Dec. 31, 1893, amounted to $40,600. 

Benjamin Franklin, at his death, April 17, 1790, 
gave to each of the two cities, Philadelphia and Bos- 
ton, in trust, £1,000 ($5,000), to be loaned to young 
married mechanics under twenty-five years of age, to 
help them start in business, in sums not to exceed £60, 
nor to be less than £15, at five per cent interest, the 
money to be paid back by them in ten annual pay- 



STEPHEN GIRARD. 49 

ments of ten per cent each. Two respectable citizens 
were to become surety for the payment of the money. 
This Franklin did because two men helped him when 
young to begin business in Philadelphia by a loan, and 
thus, he said, laid the foundation of his fortune. A 
bequest somewhat similar was founded in London more 
than twenty years previously, in 1766, — the Wilson's 
Loan Fund, "to lend sums of £100 to £300 to young 
tradesmen of the city of London, etc., at two per cent 
per annum." 

Dr. Franklin estimated that his $5,000 at interest for 
one hundred years would increase to over $600,000 
(£131,000) ; and then the managers of the fund were to 
lay out $500,000 (£100,000) says the will, "in public 
works, which may be judged of most general utility to 
the inhabitants, such as fortifications, bridges, aque- 
ducts, public buildings, baths, pavements, or whatever 
may make living in the town more convenient to its 
people, and render it more agreeable to strangers re- 
sorting hither for health or a temporary residence." In 
Philadelphia Dr. Franklin hoped the £100,000 would 
be used in bringing by pipes the water of the Wissa- 
hickon Creek to take the place of well water, and in 
making the Schuylkill completely navigable. If these 
things had been done by the end of the hundred years, 
the money could be used for other public works. 

The remaining £31,000 was to be put at interest for 
another hundred years, when it would amount to £4,600,- 
000 or $23,000,000. Of this amount £1,610,000 was 
to be given to Philadelphia, and the same to Boston, 
and the balance, £3,000,000 or $15,000,000, paid to 
each State. The figures are of especial interest, as 



50 STEPHEN GIRARD. 

showing how fast money will accumulate if kept at 
interest. 

The descendants of Franklin have tried to break the 
will, but have not succeeded. The Board of Directors 
of City Trusts of Philadelphia report for the year end- 
ing Dec. 31, 1893, that the fund of $5,000 for the first 
hundred years, though not equalling the sum which 
Franklin hoped, has yet reached the large amount of 
$102,9G8.4S. The Boston fund, says Mr. Samuel F. 
McCleary, the treasurer, amounted, at the end of a hun- 
dred years, to $431,395.70. Of this sum, $328,940 was 
paid to the city of Boston, and $102,455.70 was put at 
interest for another hundred years. This has already 
increased to $110,806.83. What an amount of good 
some other man or woman might do with $5,000 ! 

It remains to be seen to what use the two cities will 
put their gifts. Perhaps they will provide work for 
the unemployed in making good roads or in some other 
useful labor, or instead of loaning money to mechanics, 
as Franklin intended, perhaps they will erect tenement 
houses for mechanics or other working people, as is 
done by some cities in England and Scotland, following 
the example so nobly set by George Peabody, when he 
gave his $3,000,000, which has now doubled, to build 
houses for the London poor. He said, " If judici- 
ously managed for two hundred years, its accumula- 
tion will amount to a sum sufficient to buy the city of 
London." 

If Stephen Girard's $300,000 to the State of Penn- 
sylvania had been given for the making of good roads, 
thousands of the unemployed might have been provided 
with labor, tens of thousands of poor horses saved from 



STEPHEN GIRARD. 51 

useless over-work in hauling loads over muddy roads 
where the wheels sink to the hubs, and the farmers 
saved thousands of dollars in carrying their produce to 
cities. 

Stephen G-irard had a larger gift in mind than those 
to his adopted city and State. He said in his will, " I 
have been for a long time impressed with the importance 
of educating the poor, and of placing them, by the early 
cultivation of their minds, and the development of their 
moral principles, above the many temptations to which, 
through poverty and ignorance, they are exposed ; and 
I am particularly desirous to provide for such a number 
of poor male white orphan children, as can be trained in 
one institution, a better education, as well as a more 
comfortable maintenance, than they usually receive from 
the application of the public funds." 

With this object in view, a college for orphan boys, 
Mr. Girard gave to " the Mayor, Aldermen, and citizens 
of Philadelphia, all the residue and remainder of my 
real and personal estate " in trust ; first, to erect and 
maintain a college for poor white male orphans ; second, 
to establish " a competent police ; " and third, " to im- 
prove the general appearance of the city itself, and, in 
effect, to diminish the burden of taxation, now most 
oppressive, especially on those who are the least able to 
bear it," " after providing for the college as my primary 
object." 

He left $2,000,000, allowing " as much of that sum 
as may be necessary in erecting the college," which was 
" to be constructed with the most durable materials, and 
in the most permanent manner, avoiding needless orna- 
ment." He gave the most minute directions in his 



52 STEPHEN GIRARD. 

will for its size, material, " marble or granite/' and the 
training and education of the inmates. 

This residue " and remainder of my real and personal 
estate "had grown in 1891 to more than $15,000,000, 
with an income yearly of about $1,500,000. Truly 
Stephen Girard had saved ai\d labored for a magnificent 
and enduring monument! The Girard estate is one of 
the largest owners of real estate in the city of Phila- 
delphia. Outside of the city some of the Girard land is 
valuable in coal production. In the year 1893, 1,542,- 
652 tons of anthracite coal were mined from the Girard 
land. More than $4,500,000 received from its coal 
has been invested, that the college may be doubly sure 
of its support when the coal-mines are exhausted. 

Girard College, of white marble, in the form of a 
Greek temple, was begun in May, 1833, two years after 
Mr. Girard's death, and was fourteen years and six 
months in building. A broad platform, reached by 
eleven marble steps, supports the main building. Thirty- 
four Corinthian columns form a colonnade about the 
structure, each column six feet in diameter and fifty- 
five feet high, and each weighing one hundred and three 
tons, and costing about $13,000 apiece. They are beau- 
tiful and substantial, and yet $13,000 would support 
several orphans for a year or more. 

The floors and roof are of marble ; and the three-story 
building weighs over 76,000 tons, the average weight 
on each superficial foot of foundation being, according 
to Mr. Arey, about six tons. Four auxiliary white mar- 
ble buildings were required by the will of Mr. Girard 
for dormitories, schoolrooms, etc. The whole forty-five 
acres in which stand the college buildings are sur- 



STEPHEN GIB ABB. 53 

rounded, according to the given instructions, by a wall 
ten feet high and sixteen inches thick, covered with a 
heavy marble capping. 

The five buildings were completed Nov. 13, 1847, at 
a cost of nearly $2,000,000 ($1,933,821.78); and on 
Jan. 1, 1848, Girard College was opened with one hun- 
dred orphans. In the autumn one hundred more were 
admitted, and on April 1, 1849, one hundred more. 
Those born in the city of Philadelphia have the first 
preference, after them those born in the State, those 
born in New York City where Mr. Girard first landed 
in America, and then those born in New Orleans where 
he first traded. They must enter between the ages of 
six and ten, be fatherless, although the mother may be 
living, and must remain in the college till they are be- 
tween fourteen and eighteen, when they are bound out 
by the mayor till they are twenty-one, to learn some 
suitable trade in the arts, manufacture, or agriculture, 
their tastes being consulted as far as possible. Each 
orphan has three suits of clothing, one for every day, 
one better, and one usually reserved for Sundays. 

The first president of Girard College was Alexander 
Dallas Bache, a great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin, 
and head of the Coast Survey of the United States. 
He visited similar institutions in Europe, and purchased 
the necessary books and apparatus for the school. 

While the college was building, the heirs, with the 
not unusual disregard of the testator's desires, endeav- 
ored to break the will. Mr. Girard had given the fol- 
lowing specific direction in his will: "I enjoin and 
require that no ecclesiastic, missionary, or minister of 
any sect whatsoever shall ever hold or exercise any sta- 



54 STEPHEN GIRARD. 

tion or duty whatever in the said college, nor shall any 
such person ever be admitted for any purpose, or as 
a visitor, within the premises appropriated to the pur- 
poses of the said college : — In making this restriction I 
do not mean to cast any reflection upon any sect or per- 
son whatsoever; but as there is such a multitude of 
sects, and such a diversity of opinion amongst them, I 
desire to keep the tender minds of the orphans, who are 
to derive advantage from this bequest, free from the 
excitement which clashing doctrines and sectarian con- 
troversy are so apt to produce. My desire is that all the 
instructors and teachers in the college shall take pains 
to instil into the minds of the scholars the purest prin- 
ciples of morality, so that on their entrance into active 
life they may from inclination and habit evince be- 
nevolence toward their fellow-creatures, and a love of 
truth, sobriety, and industry, adopting at the same time 
such religious tenets as their matured reason may enable 
them to prefer." The heirs of Mr. Girard claimed that 
by reason of the above the college was " illegal and im- 
moral, derogatory and hostile to the Christian religion ; " 
but it was the unanimous decision of the Supreme Court 
that there was in the will " nothing inconsistent with 
the Christian religion, or opposed to any known policy 
of the State." 

On Sept. 30, 1851, the body of Stephen Girard was 
removed from the Roman Catholic Church, but not with- 
out a lawsuit by the heirs on account of its removal, to 
the college, and placed in a sarcophagus in the vestibule. 
The ceremony was entirely Masonic, the three hundred 
orphans witnessing it from the steps of the college. 
Over fifteen hundred Masons were in the procession, 



STEPHEN GIRARD. 55 

and each deposited his palm-branch upon the coffin. In 
front of the sarcophagus is a statue of Mr. Girard, by 
Gevelot of Paris, costing thirty thousand dollars. 

Girard College now has ten white marble auxiliary 
buildings for its nearly or quite two thousand orphans. 
There are more applicants than there is room to accom- 
modate. Its handsome Gothic chapel is also of white 
marble, erected in 1867. Here each day the pupils 
gather for worship morning and evening, the exercises, 
non-sectarian in character, consisting of a hymn, read- 
ing from the Bible, and prayer. On Sundays the pupils 
assemble in their section rooms at nine in the morning 
and two in the afternoon for religious reading and 
instruction ; and at 10.30 and 3 they attend worship 
in the chapel, addresses being given by the president, 
A. H. Fetterolf, Ph.D. LL.D., or some invited layman. 

In 1883 the Technical Building was erected in the 
western part of the grounds. Here instruction is given 
in metal and woodwork, mechanical drawing, shoemak- 
ing, blacksmithing, carpentry, foundry, plumbing, steam- 
fitting, and electrical mechanics. Here the pupils learn 
about the dynamo, motor, lighting by electricity, teleg- 
raphy, and the like. About six hundred boys in this 
department spend five hours a week in this practical 
work. 

At the World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago, in 
the exhibit made by Girard College, one could see the 
admirable work of the students in a single-span bridge, 
a four horse-power yacht steam-engine, a vertical engine, 
etc. The whole exhibit was given at the close of the 
Exposition to Armour Institute, to which the founder, 
Mr. Philip D. Armour, has given $1,500,000. 



56 STEPHEN GIRARD. 

To the west of the main college building is the monu- 
ment erected by the Board of Directors to the memory 
of Girard College boys killed in the Civil War. A life- 
size figure of a soldier stands beneath a canopy sup- 
ported by four columns of Ohio sandstone. The granite 
base is overgrown with ivy. On one side are the names 
of 4116 fallen ; on the other, these words, from Mr. Gi- 
rard's will, " And especially do I desire that, by every 
proper means, a pure attachment to our Republican in- 
stitutions, and to the sacred rights of conscience, as 
guaranteed by our happy constitutions, shall be formed 
and fostered in the minds of the scholars/' 

On May 20, each year, the anniversary of Mr. Gi- 
rard's birth, the graduates of Girard College gather 
from all parts of the country to do honor to the 
generous giver. Games are played, the cadets parade, 
and a dinner is provided for scholars and guests. The 
pupils seem happy and contented. Their playgrounds 
are large; and they have a bathing-pool for swimming 
in summer, and skating in winter. They receive a good 
education in mathematics, astronomy, geology, history, 
chemistry, physics, French, Spanish, with some Latin 
and Greek, with a course in business, shorthand, etc. 
Through all the years they have "character lessons," 
which every school should have throughout our coun- 
try, — familiar conversations on honesty, the dignity of 
labor, perseverance, courage, self-control, bad language, 
value and use of time, truthfulness, temperance, good 
temper, the good citizen and his duties, kindness to ani- 
mals, patriotism, the study of the lives and deeds of 
noble men and women, the Golden Rule of pla}^, — "No 
fun unless it is fun on both sides," and similar topics. 



STEPHEN GIRARD. 57 

Oral and written exercises form a part of this work. 
There is also a department of military science, a two 
years' course being given, with one recitation a week. 
A United States army officer is one of the college fac- 
ulty, and commandant of the battalion. 

The annual cost of clothing and educating each of the 
two thousand orphans, including current repairs on the 
buildings, is a little more than three hundred dollars. 
On leaving college, each boy receives a trunk with cloth- 
ing and books, amounting to about seventy-five dollars. 

Probably Mr. Girard, with all his far-sightedness, 
could not have foreseen the great good to the nation, 
as well as to the individual, in thus fitting, year after 
year, thousands of poor orphans for useful positions in 
life. Mr. Arey well says : " When in the fulness of 
time many homes have been made happy, many orphans 
have been fed, clothed, and educated, and many men 
rendered useful to their country and themselves, each 
happy home, or rescued child, or useful citizen, will be 
a living monument to perpetuate the name and embalm 
the memory of the dead l Mariner and Merchant.' " 



ANDREW CARNEGIE 



AND HIS LIBRARIES. 



"This, then, is held to be the duty of the man of 
wealth: First, to set an example of modest, unosten- 
tatious living, shunning display or extravagance ; to 
provide moderately for the legitimate wants of those 
dependent upon him ; and after doing so, to consider 
all surplus revenues which come to him simply as 
trust funds, which he is called upon to administer, and 
strictly bound as a matter of duty to administer in the 
manner which, in his judgment, is best calculated to 
produce the most beneficial results for the community, 
— the man of wealth thus becoming the mere trustee 
and agent for his poorer brethren." 

Thus wrote Andrew Carnegie in his " Gospel of 
Wealth," published in the North American Review for 
June, 1889. This article so interested Mr. Gladstone 
that he asked the editor of the Review to permit its 
republication in England, which was done. When the 
world follows this " Gospel," and those who have means 
consider themselves " trustees for their poorer breth- 
ren," and their money as "trust funds," we shall see 
little of the heartbreak and the poverty of the present 
age. 

58 



f 



WkW* 




.££< 



■L^-Tf-yyf 




m*^-r>*2-p ^ 



ANDREW CARNEGIE. 59 

" Ring in the valiant man and free, 

The larger heart, the kindlier hand; 
Ring out the darkness of the land, 
Ring in the Christ that is to be." 

Andrew Carnegie was born at Dunfermline, Scotland, 
Nov. 25, 1835, into a poor but honest home. His 
father, William Carnegie, was a weaver, a man of good 
sense, strongly republican, though living under a mon- 
archy, and well-read upon the questions of the day. 
The mother was a woman of superior mind and charac- 
ter, to whom Andrew was unusually devoted, till her 
death in 1886, when he had reached middle life. 

When Andrew was twelve years of age and his 
brother Thomas five, the parents decided to make their 
home in the New World, coming to New York in a 
sailing-vessel in 1847. They travelled to Pittsburg, 
Penn., and lived for some time in Allegheny City. 

Andrew had been sent to school in Dunfermline, and, 
having a fondness for books, was a bright, ambitious 
boy at twelve, ready to begin the struggle for a living 
so as to make the family burdens lighter. Work was 
not easily found ; but finally he obtained employment 
as a bobbin-boy in a cotton factory, at $1.20 a week. 

Mr. Carnegie, when grown to manhood, wrote in the 
Youth's Companion, April 23, 1896 : — 

" I cannot tell you how proud I was when I received 
my first week's own earnings. One dollar and twenty 
cents made by myself, and given to me because I had 
been of some use in the world ! No longer entirely de- 
pendent upon my parents, but at last admitted to the 
family partnership as a contributing member, and able 
to help them ! I think this makes a man out of a boy 



60 ANDREW CARNEGIE. 

sooner than almost anything else, and a real man too, if 
there be any germ of true manhood in him. It is every- 
thing to feel that you are useful. 

" I have had to deal with great sums. Many millions 
of dollars have since passed through my hands. But 
the genuine satisfaction I had from that one dollar and 
twenty cents outweighs any subsequent pleasure in 
money-getting. It was the direct reward of honest 
manual labor ; it represented a week of very hard work, 
so hard that but for the aim and end which sanctified 
it, slavery might not be much too strong a term to de- 
scribe it. 

" For a lad of twelve to rise and breakfast every 
morning, except the blessed Sunday morning, and go 
into the streets and find his way to the factory, and 
begin work while it was still dark outside, and not be 
released until after darkness came again in the evening, 
forty minutes' interval only being allowed at noon, was 
a terrible task. 

" But I was young, and had my dreams ; and something 
within always told me that this would not, could not, 
should not last — I should some day get into a better 
position. Besides this, I felt myself no longer a 
mere boy, but quite ' a little man ; ' and this made me 
happy." 

Another place soon opened for the lad, where he was 
set to fire a boiler in a cellar, and to manage the small 
steam-engine which drove the machinery in a bobbin 
factory. " The firing of this boiler was all right," 
says Mr. Carnegie ; "for fortunately we did not use coal, 
but the refuse wooden chips, and I always liked to work 
in wood. But the responsibility of keeping the water 



ANDREW CARNEGIE. 61 

right and of running the engine, and the danger of my 
making a mistake and blowing the whole factory to 
pieces, caused too great a strain, and I often awoke and 
found myself sitting up in bed through the night trying 
the steam-gauges. But I never told them at home that I 
was having a ' hard tussle.' No ! no ! everything must 
be bright to them. 

" This was a point of honor ; for every member of the 
family was working hard except, of course, my little 
brother, who was then a child, and we were telling each 
other only all the bright things. Besides this, no man 
would whine and give up — he would die first. 

"There was no servant in our family, and several 
dollars per week were earned by ' the mother ' by 
binding shoes after her daily work was done ! Father 
was also hard at work in the factory. And could I 
complain ? " 

Wages were small, and in every leisure moment An- 
drew looked for something better to do. He went 
one day to the office of the Atlantic and Ohio Tele- 
graph Company, and asked for work as a messenger. 
James Douglas Beid, the manager, was a Scotchman, 
and liked the lad's manner. " I liked the boy's looks/' 
said Mr. Beid afterwards ; " and it was easy to see that 
though he was little he was full of spirit. His pay 
was $2.50 a week. He had not been with me a full 
month when he began to ask whether I would teach 
him to telegraph. I began to instruct him, and found 
him an apt pupil. He spent all his spare time in prac- 
tice, sending and receiving by sound, and not by tape 
as was largely the custom in those days. Pretty soon 
he could do as well as I could at the key, and then his 



62 ANDREW CARNEGIE. 

ambition carried him away beyond doing the drudgery 
of messenger work." 

The boy liked his new occupation. He once wrote : 
"My entrance into the telegraph office was the transi- 
tion from darkness to light ; from firing a small engine 
in a dirty cellar to a clean office where there were books 
and papers. That was a paradise to me, and I bless my 
stars that sent me to be a messenger-boy in a Pittsburg 
telegraph office." 

AYhen Andrew was fourteen his father died, leaving 
him the only support of his mother and brother, seven 
years old. He believed in work, and never shirked any 
duty, however hard. 

He soon found employment as telegraph operator with 
the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. At fifteen he was 
train-despatcher, a place of unusual responsibility for a 
boy ; but his energy, carefulness, and industry were equal 
to the demands on him. 

When he was sixteen Andrew had thought out a plan 
by which trains could be run on single tracks, and 
the telegraph be used to govern their running. " His 
scheme was the one now in universal use on the single- 
tracked roads in the country ; namely, to run trains in 
opposite directions until they approached within com- 
paratively a few miles, and then hold one at a station 
until the other had passed." This thought about the 
telegraph brought Andrew into notice among those 
above him ; and he was transferred to Altoona, the head- 
quarters of the general manager. 

Young Carnegie had done what he recommends others 
to do in his "How to win Fortune," in the ISTeAV York 
Tribune, April 13, 1890. He says, " George Eliot put 



ANDREW CARNEGIE. 63 

the matter very pithily : ' I'll tell you how I got on. I 
kept my ears and my eyes open, and I made my mas- 
ter's interest my own.' 

"The condition precedent for promotion is that the 
man must first attract notice. He must do something 
unusual, and especially must this be beyond the strict 
boundary of his duties. He must suggest, or save, or 
perform some service for his employer which he could 
not be censured for not having done. When he has 
thus attracted the notice of his immediate superior, 
whether that be only the foreman of a gang, it matters 
not ; the first great step has been taken, for upon his 
immediate superior promotion depends. How high he 
climbs is his own affair." 

Carnegie "kept his eyes and ears open." In his 
"Triumphant Democracy 7 ' he relates the following in- 
cident: "Well do I remember that, when a clerk in the 
service of the Pennsylvania Eailroad Company, a tall, 
spare, farmer-looking kind of man came to me once 
when I was sitting on the end seat of the' rear car 
looking over the line. He said he had been told by the 
conductor that I was connected with the railway com- 
pany, and he wished me to look at an invention he had 
made. With that he drew from a green bag (as if it 
were for lawyers' briefs) a small model of a sleeping- 
berth for railway cars. He had not spoken a minute 
before, like a flash, the whole range of the discovery 
burst upon me. ' Yes,' I said, ' that* is something which 
this continent must have. 7 I promised to address him 
upon the subject as soon as I had talked over the mat- 
ter with my superior, Thomas A. Scott. 

" I could not get that blessed sleeping-car out of my 



C4 ANDREW CARNEGIE. 

head. Upon my return I laid it before Mr. Scott, 
declaring that it was one of the inventions of the age. 
He remarked, ' You are enthusiastic, young man ; but 
you may ask the inventor to come and let me see it.' 
I did so ; and arrangements were made to build two trial 
cars, and run them on the Pennsylvania Kail road. I 
was offered an interest in the venture, which, of course, 
I gladly accepted. Payments were to be made ten per 
cent per month after the cars were delivered, the Penn- 
sylvania Railroad Company guaranteeing to the builders 
that the cars should be kept upon its line and under its 
control. 

" This was all very satisfactory until the notice came 
that my share of the first payment was $217.50. How 
well I remember the exact sum ; but two hundred and 
seventeen dollars and a half were as far beyond my 
means as if it had been millions. I was earning fifty 
dollars per month, however, and had prospects, or at 
least I always felt that I had. What was to be done ? 
I decided to call on the local banker, Mr. JAoyd, state 
the case, and boldly ask him to advance the sum upon 
my interest in the affair. He put his hand on my shoul- 
der, and said, ' Why, of course, Andie, you are all right. 
Go ahead. Here is the money.' 

" It is a proud day for a man when he pays his last 
note, but not to be named in comparison with the day in 
which he makes his first one, and gets a hanker to take 
it. I have tried both, and I know. The cars paid the 
subsequent payments from their earnings. I paid my 
first note from my savings, so much per month ; and thus 
did I get my foot on fortune's ladder. It is easy to 
climb after that. A triumphant success was scored. 



ANDREW CARNEGIE. 65 

And thus came sleeping-cars into the world. ' Blessed 
be the man who invented sleep/ says Sancho Panza. 
Thousands upon thousands will echo the sentiment, 
' Blessed be the man who invented sleeping-cars.' Let 
me record his name, and testify my gratitude to him, 
my dear, quiet, modest, truthful, farmer-looking friend, 
T. T. Woodruff, one of the benefactors of the age." 

Mr. Pullman later engaged in sleeping-car building, 
and Carnegie advised his firm "to capture Mr. Pull- 
man." "There was a capture," says Mr. Carnegie, 
"but it did not quite take that form. They found 
themselves swallowed by this ogre, and Pullman mo- 
nopolized everything." 

While a very young man, Carnegie was appointed su- 
perintendent of the Western Division of the Pennsylva- 
nia Railroad. As superintendent he became the friend 
of Colonel Scott ; and, together with some others, they 
bought several farms along the line of the road, which 
proved very valuable oil-lands. Mr. Carnegie says of 
the Storey Farm, Oil Creek, "We purchased the farm 
for $40,000 ; and so small was our faith in the ability 
of the earth to yield for any considerable time the 
hundred barrels per day which the property was then 
producing, that we decided to make a pond capable of 
holding one hundred thousand barrels of oil, which 
we estimated would be worth, when the supply ceased, 
$1,000,000. Unfortunately for us the pond leaked fear- 
fully, evaporation also caused much loss ; but we con- 
tinued to run oil in to make the losses good day after 
day, until several hundred thousand barrels had gone in 
this fashion. 

" Our experience with the farm may be worth recit- 



bb ANDREW CARNEGIE. 

ing. Its value rose to $ 5,000,000 ; that is, the shares of 
the company sold in the market upon this basis ; and 
one year it paid in cash dividends $ 1,000,000 — rather 
a good return upon an investment of $40,000. So great 
was the yield in the district that in two years oil became 
almost valueless, often selling as low as thirty cents per 
barrel, and not infrequently it was suffered to run to 
waste as utterly worthless. 

" But as new uses were found for the oil, prices rose 
again; and to remove the difficulty of high freights, 
pipes were laid, first for short distances, and then to 
the seaboard, a distance of about three hundred miles. 
Through these pipes, of which six thousand two hundred 
miles have been laid, the oil is now pumped from two 
thousand one hundred wells. It costs only ten cents 
to pump a barrel of oil to the Atlantic. The value of 
petroleum and its products exported up to January, 
1884, exceeds in value $625,000,000." 

Within ten years from the time when Mr. Carnegie 
and his friends bought the oil-farms, their investment 
had returned them four hundred and one per cent, and 
the young Scotchman could count himself a rich man. 
Before this, however, he had entered the iron and steel 
industry, in which his great wealth has been made. 
With a little money which he had saved, he borrowed 
$1,250 from a bank, and, with five other persons, estab- 
lished the Keystone Bridge Works of Pittsburg, with 
the small capital of $G,000. This was a success from 
the first, and in latter years has had a capital of 
$1,000,000. It has built bridges all over the country, 
and structural frames for many public buildings in New 
York, Chicago, and other cities. From this time for- 



ANDREW CARNEGIE. 67 

ward Mr. Carnegie's career has been a most success- 
ful one. He lias become chief owner in the Union Iron 
Works, the Edgar Thomson Steel Works, the Homestead 
Steel Works, formerly a rival company, the Duquesne 
Works of the Allegheny Bessemer Steel Company, and 
several other iron and coke companies. The capital of 
these companies is about $30,000,000, and about twenty- 
five thousand men are employed. 

" In 1890 Carnegie Bros. & Co., Limited," says the 
Engineering and Mining Journal for July 4, 1891, 
" had a capacity to produce 600,000 tons of steel rails 
per annum, or over twenty-five per cent of the total 
capacity of all the rolling-mills of the United States, 
while its products of steel girders, plates, nails, and 
other forms of manufactured iron and steel are greater 
than at any other works in this country, and exceed 
the amount turned out at the famous Krupp Works in 
Germany." The company has supplied the United 
States Government with a large amount of armor plates 
for our new ships, and also filled a large order for the 
Russian Government. 

The Edgar Thomson Steel Works have an annual capa- 
city of 1,000,000 gross tons of ingots, 600,000 gross tons 
of rails and billets, and 50,000 gross tons of castings. 
The Duquesne Furnaces have a yearly capacity of 700,000 
gross tons of pig-iron ; the Lucy Furnaces, 200,000 gross 
tons yearly ; the Duquesne Steel Works, an annual ca- 
pacity of 450,000 gross tons of ingots. The Homestead 
Steel Works have an annual capacity of 375,000 gross 
tons of Bessemer steel and ingots, and 400,000 gross tons 
of open-hearth steel ingots. The Upper Union Mills 
have an annual output of 140,000 gross tons of steel 



68 ANDREW CARNEGIE. 

bars and steel universal mill-plates, etc. ; the Lower 
Union Mills, an annual capacity of 65,000 gross tons 
of mill-plates, bridge-work, car-forgings, etc. 

The industrious, ambitious boy was not satisfied 
merely to amass wealth. He had always been a great 
reader and thinker. In 1888 Charles Scribner's Sons 
published a book by this successful telegraph opera- 
tor and iron manufacturer, " An American Four-in- 
Hand in Britain." The trip was suggested by Mr. 
Black's novel, "The Strange Adventures of a Phae- 
ton," and extended from Brighton to Inverness, a dis- 
tance of eight hundred and thirty-one miles. 

Mr. Carnegie and his party of chosen friends made 
the journey by coach in seven weeks, from July 17 
to Aug. 3, 1881, and had a most enjoyable as well as 
instructive trip. The Critic gives Mr. Carnegie well- 
merited praise, saying that "he has produced a book 
of travel as fresh as though he had been exploring 
Thibet or navigating the River of Golden Sand." The 
book is dedicated to " My favorite heroine, my mother," 
who was the queen dowager of the volume, and whose 
happiness during the journey seemed to be the chief 
concern of her devoted son. 

This book had so cordial a reception that the follow- 
ing year, 1884, another volume was published, "Bound 
the World," covering a trip made in 1878-1879; Mr. 
Carnegie having sailed from San Francisco to Japan, 
and thence through the lands of the East. As he 
starts, his mother puts in his hand Shakespeare in 
thirteen small volumes ; and these are his company 
and delight in the long ocean voyage. Through China, 
India, and other countries, he observes closely, learns 



ANDREW CARNEGIE. . 69 

much, and tells it in a way that is always interesting. 
"Life at the East," he says, "lacks two of its most 
important elements, — the want of intelligent and re- 
fined women as the companion of man, and a Sunday. 
It has been a strange experience to me to be for sev- 
eral months without the society of some of this class 
of women, — sometimes many weeks without even speak- 
ing to one, and often a whole week without even seeing 
the face of an educated woman. And, bachelor as I 
am, let me confess what a miserable, dark, dreary, and 
insipid life this would be without their constant com- 
panionship." 

Ten years later, in 1886, Mr. Carnegie published a 
book that had a very wide reading, and at once placed 
the author prominently before the New World and the 
Old World as well, " Triumphant Democracy, or Fifty 
Years' March of the Republic." 

The book showed extensive research, a deep love for 
his adopted country, America, a warm heart, and an 
able mind. He wrote : " To the beloved Republic, under 
whose equal laws I am made the peer of any man, 
although denied political equality by my native land, 
I dedicate this book, with an intensity of gratitude and 
admiration which the native-born citizen can neither feel 
nor understand." 

No one can read this book without being amazed at 
the power and possibilities of the Republic, and without 
a deeper love for, and pride in the greatness and true 
worth of, his country. The style is bright and attrac- 
tive, and the facts stated remarkable. Americans must 
always be debtors to the Scotchman who has shown 
them how to prize their native land. 



70 ANDREW CARNEGIE. 

Mr. Carnegie wrote the book " as a labor of love," to 
show the people of the Old World the advantages of a 
republic over a monarchical form of government, and 
to Americans, "a juster estimate than prevails in some 
quarters of the political and social advantages which 
they so abundantly possess over the people of the older 
and less advanced lands, that they may be still prouder 
and even more devoted, if possible, to their institutions 
than they are. 

Mr. Carnegie shows by undisputed facts that America, 
so recently a colony of Great Britain, has now become 
" the wealthiest nation in the world," " the greatest agri- 
cultural nation," "the greatest manufacturing nation," 
"the greatest mining nation in the world." "In the 
ten years from 1870 to 1880," says Mr. Carnegie, 
"eleven and a half millions were added to the popu- 
lation of America. Yet these only added three persons 
to each square mile of territory ; and should America 
continue to double her population every thirty years, 
instead of every twenty-five years as hitherto, seventy 
years must elapse before she will attain the density 
of Europe. The population will then reach two hun- 
dred and ninety millions." 

Mr. Carnegie has said in his " Imperial Federation," 
published in the Nineteenth Century, September, 1891, 
" Even if the United States increase is to be much less 
rapid than it has been hitherto, yet the child is born 
who will see more than 400,000,000 under her sway. 
No possible increase of the race can be looked for in 
all the world combined comparable to this. Green 
truly says that its 'future home is to be found along 
the banks of the Hudson and the Mississippi.'" 



ANDREW CARNEGIE. 71 

It will surprise many to know that " the whole United 
Kingdom (England, Scotland, and Ireland) could be 
planted in Texas, and leave plenty of room around it." 

" The farms of America equal the entire territory of 
the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Germany, Aus- 
tria, Hungary, and Portugal. The corn-fields equal the 
extent of England, Scotland, and Belgium ; while the 
grain-fields generally would overlap Spain. The cotton- 
fields cover an area larger than Holland, and twice as 
large as Belgium." 

The growth of manufactures in America is amazing. 
In thirty years, from 1850 to 1880, Mr. Carnegie says 
there was an increase of nearly six hundred per cent, 
while the increase in British manufactures was little 
more than a hundred per cent. The total in America 
in 1880 was $5,560,000,000; in the United Kingdom, 
$4,055,000,000. 

" Probably the most rapid development of an industry 
that the world has ever seen," says Mr. Carnegie, "is 
that of Bessemer steel in America." In 1870 America 
made 40,000 tons of Bessemer; in 1885, fifteen years 
later, she made 1,373,513 tons, which was 74,000 tons 
more than Great Britain made. " This is advancing not 
by leaps and bounds, it is one grand rush — a rush with- 
out pause, which has made America the greatest manu- 
facturer of Bessemer steel in the world. . . . One is 
startled to find that more yards of carpet are manufac- 
tured in and around the city of Philadelphia alone than 
in the whole of Great Britain. It is not twenty years 
since the American imported his carpets, and now he 
makes more at one point than the greatest European 
manufacturing nation does in all its territory." 



72 ANDREW CARNEGIE. 

Of the manufacture of boots and shoes by machinery, 
Mr. Carnegie says, " A man can make three hundred 
pairs of boots in a day, and a single factory in Massa- 
chusetts turns out as many pairs yearly as thirty-two 
thousand bootmakers in Paris. . . . Twenty-five years 
ago the American conceived the idea of making watches 
by machinery upon a gigantic scale. The principal es- 
tablishment made only five watches per day as late as 
1854. Now thirteen hundred per day is the daily task, 
and six thousand watches per month are sent to the 
London agency." 

The progress in mining has been equally remarkable. 
"To. the world's stock of gold," says Mr. Carnegie, 
"America has contributed, according to Mulhall, more 
than fifty per cent. In 1880 he estimated the amount 
of gold in the world at 10,355 tons, worth $7,240,000,- 
000. Of this the New World contributed 5,302 tons, 
or more than half. One of the most remarkable veins 
of metal known is the Comstock Lode in Nevada. . . . 
In fourteen years this single vein yielded $ 180,000,000. 
In one year, 1876, the product of the lode was $18,000,- 
000 in gold, and $20,500,000 in silver, — a total of 
$38,500,000. Here, again, is something which the 
world never saw before. 

" America also leads the world in copper, the United 
States and Chili contributing nearly one-half the world's 
supply. ... On the south shore of Lake Superior this 
metal is found almost pure, in masses of all sizes, up to 
many tons in weight. It was used by the native In- 
dians, and traces of their rude mining operations are 
still visible." 

Mr. Carnegie says the anthracite coal-fields of Penn- 



ANDREW CARNEGIE. 73 

sylvan ia will produce 30,000,000 tons per year for four 
hundred and thirty-nine years ; and he thinks by that 
time " men will probably be burning the hydrogen of 
water, or be fully utilizing the solar rays or the tidal 
energy." The coal area of the United States comprises 
300,000 square miles; and Mr. Carnegie "is almost 
ashamed to confess it, she has three-quarters of all the 
coal area of the earth." 

While Mr. Carnegie admires and loves the Republic, 
he is devoted to the mother country, and is a most 
earnest advocate of peace between us. He writes : " Of 
all the desirable political changes which it seems to me 
possible for this generation to effect, I consider it by far 
the most important for the welfare of the race, that every 
civilized nation should be pledged, as the Eepublic is, 
to offer peaceful arbitration to its opponent before the 
senseless, inhuman work of human slaughter begins." 

In his " Imperial Federation " he writes : " AA r ar be- 
tween members of our race may be said to be already 
banished ; for English-speaking men will never again be 
called upon to destroy each other. . . . Both parties in 
America, and each successive government, are pledged 
to offer peaceful arbitration for the adjustment of all 
international difficulties, — a position which it is to 
be hoped will soon be reached by Britain, at least in 
regard to all the differences with members of the same 
race. 

"Is it too much to hope that, after this stage has 
been reached, and occupied successfully for a period, 
another step forward will be taken, and that, having 
jointly banished war between themselves, a general 
council should be evolved by the English-speaking na- 



74 ANDREW CARNEGIE. 

tions, to which may at first only be referred all questions 
of dispute between them ? . . . 

" The Supreme Court of the United States is extolled 
by the statesmen of all parties in Britain, and has just 
received the compliment of being copied in the plan for 
the Australian Commonwealth. Building upon it, may 
we not expect that a still higher Supreme Court is one 
day to come, which shall judge between the nations of 
the entire English-speaking race, as the Supreme Court 
at Washington already judges between States which 
contain the majority of the race?" 

Mr. Carnegie believes that the powers of the council- 
would increase till the commanding position of the Eng- 
lish-speaking race would make other races listen to its 
demands for peace, and so war be forever done away 
with. Mr. Carnegie rightly calls war " international 
murder," and, like Tennyson, looks forward to that 
blessed time when — 

" All men's good 
Be each man's rule, and universal Peace 
Lie like a shaft of light across the land, 
And like a lane of heains athwart the sea." 

Mr. Carnegie has also written, in the North Ameri- 
can Review for June, 1891, " The A. B. C. of Money," ur- 
ging the Republic to keep " its standard in the future, as 
in the past, not fluctuating silver, but unchanging gold." 

In his articles in the newspapers, and in his public 
addresses, he has given good advice to young men, in 
whom he takes the deepest interest. He believes there 
never were so many opportunities to succeed as now for 
the sober, frugal, energetic young man. " Real ability, 



ANDREW CARNEGIE. 75 

the capacity for doing things, never was so eagerly 
searched for as now, and never commanded such re- 
wards. . . . The great dry-goods houses that interest 
their most capable men in the profits of each depart- 
ment succeed, when those fail that endeavor to work 
with salaried men only. Even in the management of 
our great hotels it is found wise to take into partner- 
ship the principal men. In every branch of business this 
law is at work; and concerns are prosperous, generally 
speaking, just in proportion as they succeed in interest- 
ing in the profits a larger and larger proportion of their 
ablest workers. Co-operation in this form is fast com- 
ing in all great establishments." To young men he 
says, " Never enter a barroom. ... It is low and com- 
mon to enter a barroom, unworthy of any self-respecting 
man, and sure to fasten upon you a taint which will 
operate to your disadvantage in life, whether you ever 
become a drunkard or not." 

" Don't smoke. . . . The use of tobacco requires 
young men to withdraw themselves from the society 
of women to indulge the habit. I think the absence 
of women from any assembly tends to lower the tone of 
that assembly. The habit of smoking tends to carry 
young men into the society of men whom it is not desir- 
able that they should choose as their intimate associates. 
The practice of chewing tobacco was once common. 
Now it is considered offensive. I believe the race is 
soon to take another step forward, and that the coming 
man is to consider smoking as offensive as chewing was 
formerly considered." 

" Never speculate. Never buy or sell grain or stocks 
upon a margin. . . . The man who gambles upon the 



76 ANDREW CARNEGIE. 

exchanges is in the condition of the man who gambles 
at the gaming-table. He rarely, if ever, makes a per- 
manent success." 

" Don't indorse. . . . There are emergencies, no doubt, 
in which men should help their friends ; but there is a 
rule that will keep one safe. No man should place his 
name upon the obligation of another if he has not suffi- 
cient to pay it without detriment to his own business. 
It is dishonest to do so." 

Mr. Carnegie has not only written books and made 
money, he has distinguished himself as a giver of mil- 
lions, and that while he is alive. He has seen too many 
wills broken, and fortunes misapplied, when the money 
was not given away till death. He says of Mr. Tilden's 
bequest of over $5,000,000 for a free library in the city 
of New York : " How much better if Mr. Tilden had de- 
voted the last years of his own life to the proper admin- 
istration of this immense sum ; in which case neither 
legal contest nor any other cause of delay could have 
interfered with his aims." 

Of course money is sometimes so tied up in business 
that it cannot be given during a man's life; "yet," 
says Mr. Carnegie, ''the day is not far distant when the 
man who dies leaving behind him millions of available 
wealth, which was free for him to administer during 
life, will pass away -unwept, unhonored, and unsung,' 
no matter to what uses he leaves the dross which he 
cannot take with him. Of such as these the public 
verdict will then be, ' The man who dies thus rich dies 
disgraced.' " 

He believes large estates left at death should be 
taxed by the State, as is the case in Pennsylvania and 



ANDREW CARNEGIE. 77 

some other States. Mr. Carnegie does not favor large 
gifts left to families. " Why should men leave great 
fortunes to their children ? " he asks. " If this is done 
from affection, is it not misguided affection ? Observa- 
tion teaches that, generally speaking, it is not well for 
the children that they should be so burdened. Neither 
is it well for the State. Beyond providing for the wife 
and daughters moderate sources of income, and very 
moderate allowances indeed, if any, for the sons, men 
may well hesitate ; for it is no longer questionable that 
great sums bequeathed often work more for the injury 
than for the good of the recipients. There are instances 
of millionnaires' sons unspoiled by wealth, who, being 
rich, still perform great services to the community. 
Such are the very salt of the earth, as valuable as un- 
fortunately they are rare." Again Mr. Carnegie says 
of wealth left to the young, " It deadens their energies, 
destroys their ambition, tempts them to destruction, 
and renders it almost impossible that they should lead 
lives creditable to themselves or valuable to the State. 
Such as are not deadened by wealth deserve double 
credit, for they have double temptation." 

In the North American Review for December, 1889, 
Mr. Carnegie suggests what he considers seven of the 
best uses for surplus wealth : The founding of great 
universities ; free libraries ; hospitals or any means to 
alleviate human suffering; public parks and flower-gar- 
dens for the people, conservatories such as Mr. Phipps 
has given to the park at Allegheny City, which are 
visited by thousands ; suitable halls for lectures, elevat- 
ing music, and other gatherings, free, or rented for a 
small sum ; free swimming-baths for the people ; attrac- 



78 ANDREW CARNEGIE. 

tive places of worship, especially in poor localities. Mr. 
Carnegie's own great gifts have been largely along the 
line which he believes the "best gift to a community/' 
— a free public library. He thinks with John Bright 
that "it is impossible for any man to bestow a greater 
benefit upon a young man than to give him access to 
boohs in a free library." 

"It is, no doubt," he says, "possible that my own 
personal experience may have led me to value a free 
library beyond all other forms of beneficence. When 
I was a working-boy in Pittsburg, Colonel Anderson of 
Allegheny — a name I can never speak without feelings 
of devotional 'gratitude — opened his little library of 
four hundred books to boys. Every Saturday afternoon 
he was in attendance at his house to exchange books. 
No one but he who has felt it can ever know the intense 
longing with which the arrival of Saturday was awaited 
that a new book might be had. My brother and Mr. 
Phipps, who have been my principal business partners 
through life, shared with me Colonel Anderson's pre- 
cious generosity; and it was when revelling in the treas- 
ures which he opened to us that I resolved, if ever 
wealth came to me, that it should be used to establish 
free libraries, that other poor boys might receive oppor- 
tunities similar to those for which we were indebted to 
that noble man." 

" How far that little candle throws his beams ! 
So shines a good deed in a naughty world." 

Again Mr. Carnegie says, "I also come by heredity 
to my preference for free libraries. The newspaper of 
my native town recently published a history of the free 



ANDREW CARNEGIE. 79 

library in Dunfermline, and it is there recorded that 
the first books gathered together and opened to the 
public were the small collections of three weavers. 
Imagine the feelings with which I read that one of 
these three men was my honored father. He founded 
the first library in Dunfermline, his native town; and 
his son was privileged to found the last. ... I have 
never heard of a lineage for which I would exchange 
that of the library-founding weaver." 

Mr. Carnegie has given for the Edinburgh Free Li- 
brary, Scotland, $250,000 ; for one in his native town 
of Dunfermline, $90,000 ; and several thousand dollars 
each to libraries in Aberdeen, Peterhead, Inverness, 
Ayr, Elgin, Wick and Kirkwall, besides contributions 
towards public halls and reading-rooms at ISTewburgh, 
Aberdour, and many other places abroad. Mr. Car- 
negie's mother laid the corner-stone for the free li- 
brary in Dunfermline. He writes in his "American 
Four-in-Hand in Britain," "There was something of 
the fairy-tale in the fact that she had left her native 
town, poor, thirty odd years before, with her loved ones, 
to found a new home in the great Republic, and was 
to-day returning in her coach, to be allowed the privilege 
of linking her name with the annals of her beloved 
native town in one of the most enduring forms pos- 
sible." 

When the corner-stone of the Peterhead Free Library 
in Scotland was laid, Aug. 8, 1891, the wife of Mr. Car- 
negie was asked to lay the stone with square and trowel, 
and endeared herself to the people by her hearty inter- 
est and attractive womanhood. She was presented with 
the silver trowel with ivory handle which she had used, 



80 ANDREW CARNEGIE. 

and with a vase of Peterhead granite from the employees 
of the Great North of Scotland Granite Works. 

Mr. Carnegie did not marry till he was fifty-two years 
of age, in 1887, the year following the death of his 
mother and only brother Thomas. The latter died Oct. 
19, 1886. Mr. Carnegie's wife, who is thoroughly in 
sympathy with her husband's constant giving, was Miss 
Louise Whitfield, the daughter of the late Mr. John 
Whitfield of New York, of the large importing firm 
of Whitfield, Powers, & Co. Mr. Carnegie had been 
an intimate friend of the family for many years, and 
knew well the admirable qualities and cultivation of the 
lady he married. He once wrote : " There is no improv- 
ing companionship for man in an ignorant or frivolous 
woman." Miss Whitfield acted upon the advice which 
Mr. Carnegie has given in some of his addresses : " To 
the young ladies I say, ' Marry the man who loves most 
his mother.' " Mr. Carnegie now has two homes, one 
in New York City, the other at Cluny Castle, Kingussie, 
Scotland. He gives little personal attention to business, 
having delegated those matters to others. " I throw the 
responsibility upon others," he once said, " and allow 
them full swing." Mr. Carnegie is a man of great 
energy, with cheerful temperament, sound judgment, 
earnestness, and force of character. He has a large, 
well-shaped head, high forehead, brown hair and beard, 
and expressive face. 

Mr. Carnegie's gifts in his adopted country have 
been many and large. To the Johnstown Free Li- 
brary, Pennsylvania, he has given $40,000. To the 
Jefferson County Library at Fairfield, Towa, he has 
given $ 40,000, which provides an attractive building 



ANDREW CAEN EG IE. 81 

for books, museum, and lecture-hall. The late Sena- 
tor James F. Wilson gave the ground for the fire- 
proof building. The library owes much of its success 
to its librarian, Mr. A. T. Wells, who has given his 
life to the work, having held the position for thirty- 
two years. For many years he labored without salary, 
giving both time and money. 

To the Braddock Free Library, Mr. Carnegie has 
given $200,000. Braddock, ten miles east of Pitts- 
burg, has a population of 16,000, mainly the employees 
of the Edgar Thomson Steel Works ; and the village of 
Homestead lies just opposite. The handsome library 
building has a very attractive reading-room, which is 
filled in the evening and much used during the day by 
the families of the employees. There is also a large 
reading-room exclusively for boys and girls, where are 
found juvenile books and periodicals. The librarian, 
Miss Helen Sperry, writes : " There is a great deal of 
local pride in the library, and it grows constantly in the 
affection of the people." 

The building was much enlarged in 1894 to accommo- 
date the Carnegie Club of six hundred men and boys. 
The new portion contains a hall capable of seating 
eleven hundred persons, a large gymnasium, bathrooms, 
swimming-pool, bowling-alleys, etc. 

"In order to encourage public spirit in Braddock," 
says the Revien* of J?evi<m-$ mp October, 1895, "a selec- 
tion of books oil municipal improvement, streets and 
roads, public health, and other subjects in which the 
community should be interested, was placed on the 
library shelves ; and it is said tha - these books have 
been consulted by the municipal officers, and results 



82 ANDREW CARNEGIE. 

are already apparent." This is a good example for 
other librarians. Much work is being done in local 
history and in co-operation with the public schools. 

To the Carnegie Free Library of Allegheny City, 
Mr. Carnegie has given $5300,000, the city making an 
annual appropriation of $15,000 to carry on its work. 
The building is of gray granite, Romanesque in style, 
with a shelving capacity of about 75,000 volumes. The 
library has a delivery-room, a general reading-room, 
women's reading-room, reference-room, besides trustees' 
and librarians' rooms. The building also contains, on 
the first floor, a music-hall, with a seating-capacity of 
eleven hundred, where free concerts are given every 
Saturday afternoon on a ten-thousand-dollar organ ; 
there is an art-gallery on the second floor, and a lec- 
ture-room. The latter seats about three hundred per- 
sons, and is used for University Extension lectures, 
meetings of the Historical Society, etc. A room ad- 
joining is for the accommodation of scientific societies. 
The city appropriates about $8,000 yearly for the music- 
hall, fuel, repairs, etc. 

The Allegheny Free Library was formally opened by 
President Harrison on Feb. 13, 1890. Mr. Carnegie 
said, in presenting the gift of the library, " My wife, — 
for her spirit and influence are here to-night, — my wife 
and I realize to-night how infinitely more blessed it is 
to give than to receive. ... I wish that, the masses of 
working men and women, the wage-earners of all Alle- 
gheny, will remember and act upon the fact that this is 
their library, their gallery, and their hall. The poorest 
citizen, the poorest man, the poorest' woman, that toils 
from morn till night for a livelihood, as, thank Heaven, 



ANBBEW CABNEGIE. 83 

I had that toil to do in my early days, as he walks this 
hall, as he reads the books from these alcoves, as he 
listens to the organ, and admires the works of art in 
this gallery, equally with the millionnaire and the fore- 
most citizen, I want him to exclaim in his own heart, 
'Behold, all this is mine. I support it, and I am proud 
to support it. I am joint proprietor here.'" "Since 
the library opened four years ago," says Mr. William 
M. Stevenson, the librarian, " over 1,000,000 books and 
periodicals have been put into the hands of readers. . . t 
The concerts have been exceedingly popular, and inci- 
dentally have helped the library by drawing people to 
the library who might otherwise have remained in igno- 
rance of the popularity and usefulness of the institution." 

Mr. Carnegie's greatest gift has been the Pittsburg 
Library. It is a magnificent building of gray Ohio 
sandstone, in the Italian Renaissance style of architec- 
ture, with roof of red tile. The architects were Long- 
fellow, Alden, and Harlow, their plan being chosen from 
the one hundred and two sets of plans offered. The 
library building is 393 feet long and 150 feet wide, 
with two graceful towers, each 162 feet high, and has 
capacity for 300,000 volumes. The entire " stack " or 
set of shelves for books is made of iron in six stories, 
and is as nearly fireproof as possible. The lower stories 
are for the circulating-books ; the upper stories for ref- 
erence-books. 

The library proper is in the centre of the building, 
reached by a broad flight of stone steps. Above, cut in 
stone, are the Avords, " Carnegie Library ; Free to the 
People." The vestibule, finished in marble with mosaic 
floors, is handsomely decorated. On the first floor are 



84 ANDREW CARNEGIE. 

the circulating-library, "its blue-ceiling panels bordered 
with an interlace in orange and white/' a periodical 
room on either side, one for scientific and technical, the 
other for popular and literary magazines, with rooms 
for cataloguing and for the library officials. 

"The reference reading-room on the second floor, 
large, beautiful, and well-lighted," says the efficient li- 
brarian, Mr. Edwin H. Anderson, "is for quiet study. 
Here reference-books, such as encyclopaedias, diction- 
aries, atlases, etc., are at hand, on the shelves along the 
walls, to be freely consulted." This room is of a green- 
ish tone, with ivory-colored pilasters and arches, and a 
fleur-de-lis pattern painted in the wall-panels, from the 
"mark" of a famous Florentine printer and engraver 
four centuries ago. 

Across the corridor from the reference reading-room 
are five smaller rooms for special collections of books. 
One is occupied by a musical library of two thousand 
volumes, of the late Karl Merz, which was bought and 
presented to the library by several citizens of Pittsburg. 
Another will contain the collection to be purchased from 
the fund left by Mr. J. D. Bernd, and will bear his name. 
Another will be used for art-books, and another for 
science. 

The children are to have a reading-room, made attrac- 
tive by juvenile books, magazines, and copies of good 
pictures. A large and well-lighted room in the base- 
ment is used for the leading newspapers of the country. 

The library has a wing on either side, one containing 
the art-gallery, and the other the science museum. The 
former has three large picture-rooms on the second 
floor, painted in dull red, with a wall-space of 8,300 



ANDREW CARNEGIE. 85 

feet for the exhibition of paintings and prints. A cor- 
ridor 148 feet long, in which statuary will be placed, is 
decorated with copies of the frieze of the Parthenon. 
The basement of this wing will be devoted to the vari- 
ous departments of the art-schools of Pittsburg. 

In the science museum three large, well-lighted rooms 
on the second floor will be used for collections in zoology, 
botany, and mineralogy. " The closely allied branches 
of geology, the study of the earth's crust ; paleontol- 
ogy, the study of life in former ages ; anthropology, the 
natural history of the human species ; archaeology, the 
science of antiquity ; and ethnology and ethnography, 
treating of the origin, relation, characteristic costumes 
and habits of the human races, will, no doubt, receive 
as much attention as space and funds will permit." 

It is also expected that works of skill and invention 
will be gathered into an industrial museum for the 
benefit especially of the many artisans of Pittsburg. 
Courses of free lectures will be given to teachers, to 
pupils, and to the public, as in the American Museum 
of Natural History of New York. Below the three 
rooms in the museum are three lecture-rooms, which 
can be used separately or as one room. 

In one end of the large library building, and separated 
from it by a thick wall so as to deaden sound, is the 
music-hall, semi-circular in plan, with seats for two 
thousand one hundred persons, and a stage for sixty 
musicians and a chorus of two hundred. Much Sienna 
marble is used, the floor is mosaic, the walls are painted 
a deep rose-color, and the architecture proper in a soft 
ivory tone, with gilded ornamentation. Two free con- 
certs, or organ recitals, are given each week through the 



86 ANDREW CARNEGIE. 

year, on the large modern concert organ, built expressly 
for this hall. Musical lectures are also given, free 
from technicalities, illustrated by choir, organ, and piano. 
This is certainly taking music, art, and science to the 
people as a free gift. To this noble work Mr. Carnegie 
has given $2,100,000. Of this amount, $800,000 was 
for the main building, $300,000 for the seven branch 
libraries or distributing stations, and $1,000,000 as an 
endowment fund for the art-gallery. From the annual 
income of this art-fund, which will be about $50,000, 
at least three of the pictures purchased are to be the 
work of American artists exhibited that year, preferably 
in the Pittsburg gallery. 

The city of Pittsburg agrees to appropriate $40,000 
annually for the maintenance of the library system. 
Mr. Carnegie has always felt that the people should 
bear a part of the burden. He said at the opening of 
the library, Nov. 5, 1895, "Every citizen of Pittsburg, 
even the very humblest, now walks into this, his own 
library; for the poorest laborer contributes. his mite in- 
directly to its support. The man who enters a library 
is in the best society this world affords ; the good and 
the great welcome him, surround him, and humbly ask 
to be allowed to become his servants ; and if he himself, 
from his own earnings, contributes to its support, he is 
more of a man than before. ... If library, hall, gal- 
lery, or museum be not popular, and attract the manual 
toilers and benefit them, it will have failed in its mis- 
sion ; for it was chiefly for the wage-earners that it was 
built, by one who was himself a wage-earner, and who 
has the good of that class at heart." 

Mr. Carnegie has said elsewhere, " Every free library 



ANDREW CARNEGIE. 87 

in these clays should contain upon its shelves all con- 
tributions bearing upon the relations of labor and capi- 
tal from every point of view, — socialistic, communistic, 
co-operative, and individualist ; and librarians should 
encourage visitors to read them all." 

The library stands near the entrance of the valuable 
park of about 439 acres given to the city by Mrs. Schen- 
ley in 1889. " This lady," says Mr. Carnegie, " although 
born in Pittsburg, married an English gentleman while 
yet in her teens. It is forty years and more since she 
took up her residence in London among the titled and 
wealthy of the world's metropolis ; but still she turns to 
the home of her childhood, and by means of Schenley 
Park links her name with it forever. A noble use this 
of great wealth by one who thus becomes her own ad- 
ministrator." 

Near the library are the $125,000 conservatories 
given to the people by Mr. Phipps, and a source of most 
elevating pleasure. Mr. Carnegie's gifts in and about 
Pittsburg amount already to $ 5,000,000 ; yet he is soon 
to build a library for Homestead, and one each for 
Duquesne and the town of Carnegie. " Such other dis- 
tricts as may need branch libraries," says Mr. Carnegie, 
" we ardently hope we may be able to supply ; for to 
provide free libraries for all the people of Pittsburg is 
a field which we would fain make our own, as chief part 
of our life-work. I have dropped into the plural, for 
there is one always with me to prompt, encourage, sug- 
gest, discuss, and advise, and fortunately, sometimes, 
when necessary, gently to criticise ; whose heart is as 
keenly in this work as my own, preferring it to any 
other as the best possible use of surplus wealth, and 



88 ANDREW CARNEGIE. 

without whose wise and zealous co-operation I often feel 
little useful work could be done." 

Mr. Carnegie has given $50,000 to Bellevue Hospital 
Medical College, New York, for a histological labora- 
tory. He is also the founder of the magnificent Music 
Hall on the corner of Fifty-second Street and Seventh 
Avenue, New York City. The press says his invest- 
ment in the Music Hall Company Limited equals nine- 
tenths of the full cost of the hall. " It was the dearest 
wish of the elder Damrosch that a grand concert-hall 
suitable for oratorio, choral, and symphony perform- 
ances might be built in New York. The questions of 
cost, endowment, etc., have been discussed many times 
by his associates and successors, without definite result. 
It was the liberality and public spirit of Andrew Car- 
negie which finally made possible the establishment of 
a completely equipped home for music." 

The main hall, exquisite in its decorations of ivory 
white, gold, and old rose, will seat about three thousand 
persons, with standing-room for a thousand more. In the 
decorations 1,217 lamps are placed. Of these, 189 are 
in the ceiling and the walls of the stage, 339 around 
the boxes and balconies, and 689 in the main ceiling. 
When the electric current is turned on at night the 
effect is magical. The electric-light plant consists of 
four dynamos, each weighing 20,000 pounds. Besides 
the main hall, there are several smaller rooms for re- 
citals, lectures, readings, receptions, and studios. 

Mr. Carnegie will need no other monument than his 
great libraries, the influence of which will increase in 
the coming centuries. 



THOMAS HOLLOW AY: 



HIS SANATORIUM AND COLLEGE. 



Thomas Holloway, one of England's most munifi- 
cent givers, was born in Devonport, England, Sept. 22, 
1800. His father, who had been a warrant officer in a 
militia regiment, had become a baker in Devonport. 

Finding that he could support his several children 
better by managing an inn, he removed to Penzance, and 
took charge of Turk's Head Inn on Chapel Street. His 
son Thomas went to school at Camborne and Penzance 
until he was sixteen. 

He was a saving lad, for the family were obliged to be 
economical. He must also have been energetic, for this 
quality he displayed remarkably through life. After 
his father died, he and his mother and his brother 
Henry opened a grocery and bakery shop in the market- 
place at Penzance. Mrs. Holloway, the mother, was the 
daughter of a farmer at Trelyon, Lelant Parish, Corn- 
wall, and knew how to help her sons make a living in 
the Penzance shop. 

When Thomas was twenty-eight he seems to have 
tired of this kind of work or of the town, for he went 
to London to struggle with its millions in making a for- 
tune. It seemed extremely improbable that he would 

89 



90 THOMAS HOLLO WAV. 

make money ; but if lie did not make, he was too poor 
to lose much. 

For twelve years he worked in various situations, 
some of the time being " secretary to a gentleman," 
showing that he had improved his time while in school 
to be able to hold such a position. In 1836 he had 
established himself as " a merchant and foreign com- 
mercial agent" at 13 Broad Street Buildings. 

One of the men for whom Mr. Holloway, then thirty- 
six years old, did business, was Felix Albinolo, an Ital- 
ian from Turin, who sold leeches and the " St. Come et 
St. Damien Ointment." Mr. Holloway introduced the 
Italian to the doctors at St. Thomas's Hospital, who 
liked the ointment, and gave testimonials in its favor. 

Mr. Holloway, hoping that he could make some 
money out of it, prepared an ointment somewhat simi- 
lar, and announced it for sale, Oct. 15, 1837. He stated 
in his advertisement in the paper that " Holloway's 
Family Ointment" had received the commendation of 
Herbert Mayo, senior surgeon at Middlesex Hospital, 
Aug. 19, 1837. 

Albinolo warned the people in the same paper that 
the surgeon's letter was given in connection with his 
ointment, the composition of which was a secret. 
Whether this was true or not, the surgeon made no 
denial of Mr. Holloway's statement. A year later, 
as Albinolo could not sell his wares, and was in de'bt, 
he was committed to the debtors' prison, and nothing 
more is known of him or his ointment. 

There were various reports about the Holloway oint- 
ment, and the pills which he soon after added to his 
stock. It was said that for the making of one or both 



THOMAS HOLLO WAY. 91 

of these preparations an old German woman had con- 
fided her knowledge to Mr. Holloway's mother, and she 
in turn had told her son. Mr. Holloway as long as he 
lived had great faith in his medicines, and believed they 
would sell if they could be brought to the notice of the 
people. 

Every day he took his pills and his ointment to the 
docks to try to interest the captains and passengers sail- 
ing to all parts of the world. People, as usual, were 
indifferent to an unknown man and unknown medicines, 
and Mr. Holloway went back to his rooms day after day 
with little money or success. He advertised in the press 
as much as he was able, indeed, more than he was able ; 
for he got into debt, and, like Albinolo, was thrust into 
a debtors' prison on White Cross Street. He effected a 
release by arranging with his creditors, whom he after- 
wards paid in full, with ten per cent interest, it is said, 
to such as willingly granted his release. 

Mr. Holloway had married an unassuming .girl, Miss 
Jane Driver, soon after he came to London ; and she was 
assisting in his daily work. Mr. Holloway used to 
labor from four o'clock in the morning till ten at night, 
living, with his wife, over his patent-medicine Avare- 
house at 244 Strand. He told a friend years after- 
wards that the only recreation he and his wife had 
during the week was to take a walk in that crowded 
thoroughfare. Speaking of the great labor and anxiety 
in building up a business, he said, "If I had then of- 
fered the business to any one as a gift they would not 
have accepted it." 

The constant advertising created a demand for the 
medicines. In 1842, five years after he began to make 



92 THOMA S HOLLOW A ) r . 

his pills and ointment, Mr. Hollo way spent £5,000 in 
advertising; in 1845 he spent £10,000; in 1851, 
£20,000; in 1855, £30,000; in 1864, £40,000; in 
1882, £45,000, and later £50,000, or $250,000, eaeh 
year. 

Mr. Holloway published directions for the use of his 
medicines in nearly every known language, — Chinese, 
Turkish, Armenian, Arabic, and most of the vernacu- 
lars of India. He said he " believed he had advertised 
in every respectable newspaper in existence." The busi- 
ness had begun to pay well evidently in 1850, about 
twelve years after he started it; for in that year Mr. 
Holloway obtained an injunction against his brother, who 
had commenced selling " Holloway's Pills and Ointment 
at 210 Strand." Probably the brother thought a partner- 
ship in the bakery in their boyish days had fitted him 
for a partnership in the sale of the patent medicines. 

In I860 Mr. Holloway sent a physician to France to 
introduce his preparations ; but the laws not being favor- 
able to secret remedies, not much was accomplished. 
When the new Law Courts were built in London, Mr. 
Holloway moved his business to 533 New Oxford Street, 
since renumbered 78, where he employed one hundred 
persons, besides the scores in his branch offices. 

"Of late years," says the Manchester Guardian, "his 
business became a vast banking-concern, to which the 
selling of patent medicines was allied ; and he was 
understood to say some few years ago that his profits 
as a dealer in money approached the enormous sum of 
£100,000 a year. . . . The ground-floor of his large 
establishment in Oxford Street was occupied with clerks 
engaged in bookkeeping. On the first and second floors 



THOMAS HOLLO W AY. 93 

one might gain a notion of the profits of pill-making by 
seeing young women filling boxes from small hillocks of 
pills containing a sufficient close for a whole city. On 
the topmost floor were Mr. Hollo way's private apart- 
ments." 

Later in life Mr. Holloway moved to a country home, 
Tittenhurst, Sunninghill, which is about six miles from 
Windsor, and on the boarders of the great park of eight- 
een hundred acres, where he lived without any display, 
and where his wife died, Sept. 25, 1871, at the age of 
seventy-one. 

He never had any desire for title or public prominence, 
and when, after his gifts had made him known and hon- 
ored, a baronetcy was suggested to him, he would not 
consent to it. Mr. Holloway had worked untiringly; he 
had not spent his money in extravagant living ; and now, 
how should he use it for the best good of his country ? 

The noble Earl of Shaftesbury had been giving much 
of his early life to the amelioration of the insane. He 
had visited asylums in England, and seen lunatics chained 
to their beds, living on bread and water, or shut up in 
dark, filthy cells, neglected, and often abused. He ascer- 
tained that over seventy-five per cent may be cured if 
treatment is given in the first twelve months ; only five 
per cent if given later. He was astonished to find that 
no one seemed to care about these unfortunates. 

He longed to see an asylum built for the insane of 
the middle classes. He addressed public meetings in 
their behalf; and Mr. Holloway was in one of these 
meetings, and listened to Lord Shaftesbury's fervent 
appeal. His heart was greatly moved ; and he visited 
Shaftesbury, and together they conferred about the 



94 THOMAS HOLLOWAY. 

great gift which was consummated later. It is said 
also that at Mr. Gladstone's breakfast-table, Mrs. Glad- 
stone advised with Mr. Holloway about the need of 
convalescent homes. 

In the year 1873 Mr. Holloway put aside nearly 
£300,000 ($1,500,000) for an institution for the in- 
sane of the middle classes, such as professional men, 
clerks, teachers, and governesses, as the lower classes 
were quite well provided for in public asylums. 

A picturesque spot was chosen for the Holloway San- 
atorium, — forty acres of ground near Virginia Water, 
which is six miles from Windsor, though within the 
royal domains. Virginia Water is a beautiful artificial 
lake, about seven miles in circumference, a mile and a 
half long, and one-third of a mile wide. The lake was 
formed in 1746, in order to drain the moorland, by Wil- 
liam, Duke of Cumberland, uncle of George III. Near 
by is an obelisk with this inscription : " This obelisk 
was raised by the command of George II., after the 
battle of Culloden, in commemoration of the services of 
his son W'illiam, Duke of Cumberland, the success of his 
arms, and the gratitude of his father." This lake, with 
its adjacent gardens, pavilions, and cascades, was the 
favorite summer retreat of George IV., who built there 
a fishing-temple richly decorated. A royal barge, thirty- 
two feet long, for the use of royalty, is stationed on the 
lake. 

In the midst of this attractive scenery Mr. Holloway 
caused his forty acres to be laid out with tasteful flower- 
beds, walks, and thousands of trees and shrubs. Occu- 
pied with his immense business, he yet had time to 
watch the growth of his great benevolent project. 



THOMAS irOLLOWAY. 95 

Mr. W. H. Crossland, who had built the fine Town 
Hall at Rochdale, was chosen as the architect, and began 
at Virginia Water the stately and handsome Sanatorium 
in the English Renaissance style of architecture, of red 
brick with stone trimmings. There is a massive and 
lofty tower in the centre. The interior is finished in 
gray marble, which is enriched with cheerful colors and 
plentiful gilding. The great lecture or concert hall, 
adorned with portraits of distinguished persons by Mr. 
Girardot and other artists, has a very richly gilded roof. 
The refectory is decorated by a series of beautiful fancy 
groups after Watteau, forming a frieze. 

The six hundred rooms of the building, great and 
small, on the four floors, are exquisitely finished and fur- 
nished, all made as attractive as possible, that those of 
both sexes who are weary and broken in mind may 
have much to interest them in their long days of absence 
from home and friends. Students of the National Art 
Training School, under Mr. Poynter, did much of the 
art work. There are no blank walls. 

The Holloway Sanatorium, which is five hundred feet 
by two hundred feet in extent, has a model laundry in a 
separate building, pretty red brick houses for the staff 
and those who are not obliged to sleep in the building, a 
pleasure-house for rest and recreation for the inmates, 
and a handsome chapel. 

Four hundred or more patients can be accommodated. 
A moderate charge is made for those who can afford to 
pay, and only those persons thought to be curable are 
received. As much freedom is allowed as possible, that 
the inmates may not unnecessarily feel the surveillance 
under which they are obliged to live. 



9G THOMAS HOLLOW AY. 

The Sanatorium was opened June 15, 1885, by the 
Prince of Wales, accompanied by the Princess, their 
three daughters, and the Duke of Cambridge. Mr. 
Martin Holloway, the brother-in-law of Mr. Thomas 
Holloway, spoke of the uses of the Sanatorium, and the 
Prince of Wales replied in a happy manner. 

Many inmates were received at once, and the institu- 
tion has proved a great blessing. 

To what other uses should Mr. Holloway put his 
large fortune ? He and Mrs. Holloway had long thought 
of a college for women, and after her death he deter- 
mined to build one as a memorial to her who had helped 
him through all those daye of poverty and self-sacrifice. 

In 1875 Mr. Holloway held a conference with the 
blind Professor Henry Fawcett, Member of Parliament, 
and his able wife, Mrs. Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Mr. 
Samuel Morley, M.P., Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth, 
Bart., Mr. David Chadwick, M.P., Dr. Hague of New 
York, and others interested in the higher education of 
women. Mr. Holloway foresaw, with these educators, 
that in the future women would seek a university edu- 
cation like their brothers. " For many years," says Mr. 
Martin Holloway, "his mind was dominated by the 
idea that if a higher form of education would ennoble 
women, the sons of such mothers would be nobler men." 

On May 8, 187G, Mr. Holloway purchased, and con- 
veyed in trust to Mr. Henry Driver Holloway and Mr. 
George Martin Holloway, his brother-in-law, and Mr. 
David Chadwick, M.P., ninety-five acres on the southern 
slope of Egham Hill, Surrey, for his college for women. 
It is in the midst of most picturesque and beautiful 
scenery, rich in historical associations. Egham is five 



TKOMAS HOLLOW AY. 97 

miles from Windsor, near the Thames, and on the bor- 
ders of Runnymede, so called from the Saxon Rune- 
mede, or Council Meadow, where the barons, June 15, 
1215, compelled King John to sign the Magna Charta. 
A building was erected to commemorate this important 
event, and the table on which the charter was signed is 
still preserved. 

Near by is Windsor Great Park, with seven thousand 
fallow deer in its eighteen hundred acres, and its noted 
long walk, an avenue of elms three miles in length, ex- 
tending from the gateway of George IV., the principal 
entrance to Windsor Castle, to Snow Hill, crowned by 
a statue of George III., by Westmacott. Not far away 
from Egham are lovely Virginia Water and Staines, 
from Stana, the Saxon for stone, where one sees the city 
boundary stone, on which is inscribed, " God preserve 
the city of London, a.d. 1280." This marks the limit 
of jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor of London over the 
Thames. 

After Mr. Holloway had decided to build his college, 
he visited the chief cities of Europe with Mr. Martin 
Holloway to ascertain what was possible about the best 
institutions of learning, and the latter made a personal 
inspection of colleges in the United States. Mr. Hollo- 
way was seventy-six, and too old for a long journey to 
America. 

Plans were prepared by Mr. W. H. Crossland of Lon- 
don, who spent much time in France studying the old 
French chateaux before he began his work on the col- 
lege. The first brick was laid Sept. 12, 1879. Mr. 
Holloway wished this structure to be the best of its 
kind in England, if not in the world. The Annual 



98 THOMAS HOLLO WAY. 

Register says in regard to Mr. Hollo way's two great 
gifts, " When their efficiency or adornment was con- 
cerned, his customary principle of economy failed to 
restrain him." 

The college is a magnificent building in the style of 
the French Renaissance, reminding one of the Louvre 
in Paris, of red brick with Portland stone dressings, 
with much artistic sculpture. 

" It covers," says a report prepared by the college 
authorities, " more ground than any other college in the 
world, and forms a double quadrangle, measuring 550 
feet by 376 feet. The general design is that of two 
long, lofty blocks running parallel to each other, and con- 
nected in the middle and at either end by lower cross 
buildings. . . . The quadrangles each measure about 
256 feet by 182 feet. Cloisters run from east to west 
on two sides of each quadrangle, with roofs whose upper 
sides are constructed as terraces, the capitals being ar- 
ranged as triplets." 

No pains or expense have been spared to finish and 
furnish this college with every comfort, even luxury. 
There are over 1,000 rooms, and accommodations for 
about 300 students. Each person has two rooms, one 
for sleeping and one for study; and there is a sitting- 
room for every six persons. The dining-hall is 100 
feet long, 30 wide, and 30 high. The semi-circular ceil- 
ing is richly ornamented. The recreation-hall, which 
is in reality a picture-gallery, is 100 feet long, 30 wide, 
and 50 high, with beautiful ceiling and floor of pol- 
ished marquetry. The pictures here were collected by 
Mr. Martin Holloway, and cost about £100,000, or half 
a million dollars. Sir Edwin Landseer's famous pic- 



THOMAS HOLLO WAY. 99 

ture, " Man proposes, God disposes/' was purchased for 
£6,000. It was painted in 1864 by Landseer, who re- 
ceived £2,500 for it. It represents an arctic incident 
suggested by the finding of the relics of Sir John 
Franklin. 

Here are " The Princes in the Tower " and " Princess 
Elizabeth in Prison at St. James," by Sir John Mil- 
lais; "The Babylonian Marriage Market" and "The 
Suppliants," by Edwin Long ; " The Railway Station," 
by "W. P. Frith ; and other noted works. The gallery 
is open to the public every Thursday afternoon, and in 
the summer months on Saturdays also. There are 
several thousand visitors each year. 

The college has twelve rooms with deadened walls 
for practising music, a gymnasium, six tennis-courts 
(three of asphalt and three of grass), a large swimming- 
bath, a lecture theatre, museum, a library with carved 
oak bookcases reaching nearly to the ceiling, and an 
immense kitchen which serves for a school for cookery. 
Electric lights and steam heat are used throughout the 
buildings, and there are open fireplaces for the students' 
rooms. 

The chapel, 130 feet long by 30 feet wide, says the 
London Graphic for July 10, 1886, " is a singularly 
elaborate building in the Renaissance style. ... In its 
decoration a strong tendency to the Italian school of the 
latter part of the sixteenth century is apparent. This 
is especially the case with the roof, which bears a kind 
of resemblance to that of the Sistine Chapel at Rome, 
though it cannot in any way be said to be a copy of that 
magnificent work. . . . The choir, or nave, is seated 
with oak benches arranged stall-ways, as is usual in the 



100 THOMAS HOLLO WAY. 

college chapels of Oxford and Cambridge. . . . The 
roof is formed of an elliptic barrel-vault, the lower por- 
tions of which are adorned with statues and candelabra 
in high relief, and the upper portion b}' painted enrich- 
ments. The former are a very remarkable series of 
works by the Italian sculpture Fucigna, who had learned 
his art in the studios of Tenerani and Rauch at Rome. 
These were his last works, and he did not live to com- 
plete them. The figures represent the prophets and 
other personages from the Old Testament on the left 
side, and apostles, evangelists, and saints from the New 
Testament on the right. The baldachino is constructed 
of walnut and oak, richly carved ; and the organ front, 
at the opposite end of the chapel, is a beautiful example 
of wood-carving." 

The building and furnishing of the college cost £600,- 
000, the endowment £300,000, the pictures £100,000, 
making in all about one million sterling, or five mil- 
lion dollars. The deed of foundation states that " the 
college is founded by the advice and counsel of the 
founder's dear wife." When Mrs. Holloway was toil- 
ing with her husband over the shop in the Strand, witli 
no recreation during the week except a walk, as he said, 
in that crowded thoroughfare, how little she could have 
realized that this beautiful monument would be built to 
her memory ! 

Mr. Holloway did not live to see his college com- 
pleted ; as he died, after a brief illness of bronchitis, at 
Tittenhurst, Wednesday, Dec. 26, 1883, aged eighty- 
three, and was buried in St. Michael's Churchyard, Sun- 
ninghill, Jan. 4, 1884. 

Mr. Martin Holloway faithfully carried out his rela- 



THOMAS HOLLO WAY. 101 

tive's wishes ; and when the college was ready for occu- 
pancy, it was opened by Queen Victoria in person, on 
Wednesday, June 30, 1886. The day was fine ; and 
Egham was gayly decorated for the event with flowers, 
banners, and arches. The Queen, with Princess Beatrice 
and her husband, the late Prince Henry of Battenberg, 
the Duke of Connaught, and other members of the royal 
family, drove over from Windsor through Frogmore, 
where Prince Albert is buried, and Eunnymede to 
Egham, in open carriages, each carriage drawn by four 
gray horses ridden by postilions. Outriders in scarlet 
preceded the procession, which was accompanied by an 
escort of Life Guards. 

Beaching the college at 5.30 p.m., the Queen and 
Princess Beatrice were each presented with a bouquet 
by Miss Driver Holloway, and were conducted to the 
chapel, where a throne had been prepared for her Maj- 
esty. Princess Beatrice, Prince Henry of Battenberg, 
and the Duke of Cambridge stood on her left, with the 
Duke of Connaught, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and 
others on her right. The choir sang an ode composed 
by Mr. Martin Holloway, and the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury offered prayer. 

The Queen then admired the decorations of the chapel, 
and proceeded to the picture gallery, where the architect 
presented to her an album with illustrations of the col- 
lege, and the contractor, Mr. J. Thompson, offered her a 
beautiful key of gold. The top of the stem is encircled 
by two rows of diamonds ; and the bow at the top is an 
elegant piece of gold, enamel, and diamonds. A laurel 
wreath of diamonds surrounds the words, "Opened by 
H. M. the Queen, June 30, 1886." 



102 THOMAS HOLLOW AY. 

The Queen was then conducted to the upper quadran- 
gle, where she seated herself in a chair of state on a dais, 
under a canopy of crimson velvet. A great concourse 
of people were gathered to witness the formal opening of 
the college. The lawn was also crowded, six hundred 
children being among the people. After the band of the 
Royal Artillery played to the singing of the national 
anthem, "God save the Queen," Mr. Martin Holloway 
presented an address to her Majesty in a beautiful cas- 
ket of gold. "The casket rests on four pediments, on 
each of which is seated a female figure," says the London 
Times, "which are emblematical of education, science, 
music, and painting. On the front panel is a view of 
Royal Holloway College, on either side of which is a 
medallion containing the royal and imperial monogram, 
V.R.L, executed in colored enamel. Underneath the 
view is the monogram of the founder, Mr. Thomas 
Holloway, in enamel." 

At one end of the casket are the royal arms, and at 
the opposite end the Holloway arms and motto, "Nil 
Desperandum," richly emblazoned in enamel. The cas- 
ket is surmounted by a portrait model of Mr. Holloway, 
seated in a classic chair, being a reduction from the 
model from life taken by Signor Fucigna. 

After the address in the casket was presented to 
Queen Victoria, the Earl of Kimberley, the minister in 
attendance, stepped forward, and said, " I am com- 
manded by her Majesty to declare the college open." 
Trumpets were blown by the Eoyal Scots' Greys, 
cheers were given, the archbishop pronounced the ben- 
ediction, and the choir sang "Rule Britannia." The 
Queen before her departure expressed her pleasure and 



THOMAS HOLLO WAY. 103 

satisfaction in the arrangement of the institution, and 
commanded that it be styled, " The Koyal Holloway 
College." 

More than a year later, on Friday, Dec. 16, 1887, a 
statue of the Queen was unveiled in the upper quadran- 
gle of the college by Prince Christian. A group of the 
founder and his wife in the lower quadrangle was also 
unveiled. Both statues are of Tyrolese marble, and are 
the work of Prince Victor of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. 
The Rt. Hon. Earl Granville, K.G., made a very inter- 
esting address. 

The college has done admirable work during the ten 
years since its opening. The founder desired that ulti- 
mately the college should confer degrees, but at present 
the students qualify for degrees at existing universities. 
In the report for 1895 of Miss Bishop, the principal, she 
says, "We have now among our students, past and 
present, fifty-one graduates of the University of London 
(twenty-one in honors), and twenty -one students who 
have obtained Oxford University honors. ... This is 
the second year that a Holloway student has won the 
Gilchrist medal, which is awarded to the first woman on 
the London B. A. list, provided she obtains two-thirds 
of the possible marks.' 7 In 1891 a Holloway student 
was graduated from the Koyal University of Ireland 
with honors. 

Students are received who do not wish to work for a 
university examination, " provided they are bona fide 
students, with a definite course of work in view," says 
the college report for 1895. They must be over seven- 
teen, pass an entrance examination, and remain not less 
than one year. There are twelve entrance scholarships 



104 THOMAS HOLLO WAY. 

of the value of £50 to £75 a year, and twelve founder's 
scholarships of £30 a year, besides bursaries of the 
same value. The charge for board, lodging, and instruc- 
tion is £90 or $450 a year. 

Courses of practical instruction are given in cookery, 
ambulance-work, sick-nursing, wood-carving, and dress- 
making. Mr. Holloway states in his deed : " The curric- 
ulum of the college shall not be such as to discourage 
students who desire a liberal education apart from the 
Greek and Latin languages ; and proficiency in classics 
shall not entitle students to rewards of merit over others 
equally proficient in other branches of knowledge." 
While the governors, some of whom rightly must always 
be women, may provide instruction in subjects which 
seem most suitable, Mr. Holloway expresses his sensi- 
ble belief that " the education of women should not be 
exclusively regulated by the traditions and methods of 
former ages." 

The students at Holloway, according to an article in 
Harper's Bazar, March 10, 1894, by Miss Elizabeth C. 
Barney, have a happy as well as busy life. She says, 
"The girls have a running-club, which requires an en- 
trance examination of each candidate for election, the 
test being a rousing sprint around the college — one- 
third of a mile — within three minutes, or fail. After 
this has been successfully passed, the condition of con- 
tinued membership is a repetition of this performance 
eight times every two weeks, on pain of a penny fine for 
every run neglected. On stormy days the interior corri- 
dors are not a bad course, inasmuch as each one meas- 
ures one-tenth of a mile in length." 

" Nor are in-door amusements less in vogue than out- 



THOMAS HOLLO WAY. 105 

door sports. There are the ' Shakespeare Evenings ' and 
the * French Evenings/ the ' Fire Brigade ' and the ' De- 
bating Society/ and a host of other more or less social 
events. . . . The Debating Society is an august body, 
which holds its sittings in the lecture theatre, and deals 
with all the questions of the United Kingdom in the 
most irreproachable Parliamentary style. They divide 
into Government and Opposition, and pass and reject 
bills in a way which would do credit to the nation in 
Parliament assembled." 

The girls also, she says, "have a string orchestra of 
violins and 'celli, numbering about fifteen performers. 
The girls meet one evening a week in the library for 
practice, and enter into it more as recreation before 
study than as serious work. They play very well in- 
deed together, and sometimes give concerts for the rest 
of the college." 

A writer in the Atlanta Constitution for April 3, 1892, 
thus describes the drill of the fair fire brigade : " ' The 
Hollo way Volunteer Brigade ' formed in three sections 
of ten students each, representing the occupants of dif- 
ferent floors. They were drawn up in line at ' Right 
turn ! Quick march ! Position ! ' Then each section 
went quite through with two full drills. 

"A fire in sitting-room No. 10 was supposed. At 
command ' Get to work ! ' the engine was run down to 
the doorway, a ' chain ' of recruits was formed to the 
nearest source of water-supply, and the buckets were 
handed in line that the engine might be kept in full 
play. The pump was vigorously applied by two girls, 
while another worked the small hose quickly and in- 
geniously, so that the engine was at full speed in less 



106 THOMAS HOLLOW AY. 

than a minute. When the drill was concluded with 
the orders ' Knock off ! ' and ' Make up ! ' everything 
had been put in its own place. 

"Then came the 'Hydrant Drill,' which was con- 
ducted at the hydrant nearest the point of a supposed 
outbreak of fire. In this six students from each section 
took part. Directly the alarm was given one hundred 
feet of canvas hose was run out, and an additional 
length (regulated, of course, *by the distance) was joined 
to it. At the words * Turn on ! ' by the officer known 
as ' branch hoseman/ the hose was directed so that, had 
there been water in it, it must have streamed onto the 
supposed fire. This drill was also accomplished in only 
a minute ; and at the commands ' Knock off ! ' and 'Make 
up ! ' the hose-pipes were promptly disconnected, the 
pipe that is always kept attached to the hydrant was 
'flaked down,' and an extra one hundred feet 'coiled 
up ' on the bight with astonishing rapidity. The drills 
are genuine realities, and the students thoroughly enjoy 
them." 

There is also a way of escape for the students in case 
of fire. The " Merryweather Chute," a large tube of spe- 
cially woven fire-proof canvas, is attached to a wrought- 
iron frame that fits the window opening. There is 
also a drill with this chute. When the word is given, 
" Make ready to go down chute," the young woman 
draws her dress around her, steps feet foremost into 
the tube, and regulates her speed by means of a rope 
made fast to the frame, and running through the chute 
to the ground. Fifty students can descend from a 
window in five minutes with no fear after they have 
practised. 



THOMAS HOLLO WAY. 107 

Mr. Holloway and his wife worked hard to accumulate 
their fortune, but they placed it where it will do great 
good for centuries to come. In so doing they made 
for themselves an honored name and lasting remem- 
brance. 



CHARLES PRATT 



AND HIS INSTITUTE. 



" It is a good thing to be famous, provided that the 
fame has been honestly won. It is a good thing to be 
rich when the image and superscription of God is rec- 
ognized on every coin. But the sweetest thing in the 
world is to be loved. The tears that were shed over the 
coffin of Charles Pratt welled up out of loving hearts. 
... I count his death to have been the sorest bereave- 
ment Brooklyn has ever suffered ; for he was yet in his 
vigorous prime, with large plans and possibilities yet to 
be accomplished. 

" Charles Pratt belonged to the only true nobility in 
America, — the men who do not inherit a great name, 
but make one for themselves." Thus wrote the Rev. 
Dr. Theodore L. Cuyler of Brooklyn, after Mr. Pratt's 
death in 1891. 

Charles Pratt, the founder of Pratt Institute, was born 
at Watertown, Mass., Oct. 2, 1830. His father, Asa 
Pratt, a cabinet-maker, had ten children to support, 
so that it became necessary for each child to earn for 
himself whenever that was possible. 

When Charles was ten years old, he left home, and 
found a place to labor on a neighboring farm. For 
three years the lad, slight in physique, but ambitious to 

108 




CHARLES PRATT. 



CHARLES PRATT. 109 

earn, worked faithfully, and was allowed to attend 
school three months in each winter. At thirteen he 
was eager for a broader field, and, going to Boston, was 
employed for a year in a grocery store. Soon after he 
went to Newton, and there learned the machinist's 
trade, saving every cent carefully, because he had a plan 
in his mind; and that plan was to get an education, 
even if a meagre one, that he might do something in the 
world. 

Finally he had saved enough for a year's schooling, 
and going to Wilbraham Academy, at Wilbraham, Mass., 
" managed," as he afterwards said, " to live on one dol- 
lar a week while I studied." Fifty dollars helped to 
lay the foundation for a remarkably useful and noble 
life. 

When the year was over and the money spent, having 
learned already the value of depending upon himself 
rather than upon outside help, the youth became a clerk 
in a paint-and-oil store in Boston. Here the thirst for 
knowledge, stimulated but only partially satisfied by the 
short year at the academy, led him to the poor man's 
blessing, - — the library. Here he could read and think, 
and be far removed from evil associations. 

When he was twenty-one, in 1851, Charles Pratt 
went to New York as a clerk for Messrs. Schanck & 
Downing, 108 Fulton Street, in the oil, paint, and glass 
business. The work was constant ; but he was happy 
in it, because he believed that work should be the duty 
and pleasure of all. He never changed in this love for 
labor. He said years afterwards, when he was worth 
millions, " I am convinced that the great problem which 
we are trying to solve is very much wrapped up in the 



110 CHARLES PRATT. 

thought of educating the people to find happiness in 
a busy, active life, and that the occupation of the hour 
is of more importance than the wages received. " He 
found " happiness in a busy, active life," when he was 
earning fifty dollars a year as well as when he was a 
man of great wealth. 

Years later Mr. Pratt's son Charles relates the follow- 
ing incident, which occurred when his father came to 
visit him at Amherst College : " He was present at a lec- 
ture to the Senior class in mental science. The subject 
incidentally discussed was 'Work,' its necessary drain 
upon the vital forces, and its natural and universal dis- 
tastefulness. On being asked to address the class, my 
father assumed to present the matter from a point of 
view entirely different from that of the text-book, and 
maintained that there was no inherent reason why man 
should consider his daily labor, of whatever nature, as 
necessarily disagreeable and burdensome, but that the 
right view was the one which made of work a delight, 
a source of real satisfaction, and even pleasure. Such, 
indeed, it was to him ; he believed it might prove to be 
such to all others." 

After Mr. Pratt had worked three years for his New 
York firm, in connection with two other gentlemen he 
bought the paint-and-oil business of his employers, and 
the new firm became Eaynolds, Devoe, & Pratt. For 
thirteen years he worked untiringly at his business ; and 
in 1867 the firm was divided, the oil portion of the busi- 
ness being carried on by Charles Pratt & Co. In the 
midst of this busy life the influence of the Mercantile 
Library of Boston was not lost. He had become asso- 
ciated with the Mercantile Library of New York, and 



CHARLES PRATT. Ill 

both this and the one in Boston had a marked influence 
on his life and his great gifts. 

When the immense oil-fields of Pennsylvania began to 
be developed, about I860, Mr. Pratt was one of the first 
to see the possibilities of the petroleum trade. He began 
to refine the crude oil, and succeeded in producing prob- 
ably the best upon the market, called " Pratt's Astral 
Oil." Mr. Pratt took a just pride in its wide use, and 
was pleased, says a friend, " when the Rev. Dr. Buckley 
told him that he had found that the Russian convent 
on Mount Tabor was lighted with Pratt's Astral Oil. 
He meant that the stamp 'Pratt' should be like the 
stamp of the mint, — an assurance of quality and 
quantity." 

For years he was one of the officers of the Standard 
Oil Company, and of course a sharer in its enormous 
wealth. Nothing seemed more improbable when he 
was spending a year at Wilbraham Academy, living on 
a dollar a week, than this ownership of millions. Now, 
as then, he was saving of time as well as money. 

Says Mr. James McGee of New York, " He brought to 
business a hatred of waste. He disliked waste of every 
kind. He was not willing that the smallest material 
should be lost. He did not believe in letting time go 
to waste. He was punctual at his engagements, or gave 
good excuse for his tardiness. Speaking of an evening 
spent in congratulations, he said that it was time lost ; 
it would have been better spent in reviewing mistakes, 
that they might be corrected. It is said that a youth 
who had hurried into business applied to Mr. Pratt for 
advice as to whether he should go West. He questioned 
the young man as to how he occupied his time ; what he 



112 CHARLES PRATT. 

did before business hours, and what after ; what he was 
reading or doing to improve his mind. Finding that the 
young man was taking no pains to educate himself, he 
said emphatically, 'No; don't go West. They don't 
want you.' " 

Active as Mr. Pratt was in the details of a great busi- 
ness, he found time for other work. Desiring an educa- 
tion, which he in his early days could not obtain, he 
provided the best for his children. He became deeply 
interested in Adelphi Academy, Brooklyn, was a trustee, 
and later president of the Board. In 1881 he erected the 
wing of the main building ; and six years later, in 1887, 
he gave $160,000 for the erection of a new building. 

He gave generously to the Baptist Church in Brook- 
lyn in which he worshipped, and from the pews of 
which he was seldom absent on the Sabbath. He be- 
stowed thousands upon struggling churches. He gener- 
ously aided Rochester Theological Seminary. He gave 
to Amherst College, through his son Charles M. Pratt, 
about $40,000 for a gymnasium, and through his son 
Frederick B. Pratt thirteen acres for athletic grounds. 
He helped foreign missions and missions at home with 
an open hand. 

" There were," says Dr. Cuyler, " innumerable little 
rills of benevolence that trickled into the homes of the 
needy and the hearts of the straitened and suffering. 
I never loved Charles Pratt more than when he was 
dealing with the needs of a bright orphan girl, whose 
case appealed strongly to his sympathies. After inquir- 
ing into it carefully, he said to me, ' We must be careful 
when trying to aid this young lady, not to cripple her 
energies, or lower her sense of independence.' 



CHARLES PRATT. 113 

"The last time his hand ever touched paper was to 
sign a generous check for the benefit of our Brooklyn 
Bureau of Charities. Almost the last words that he 
ever wrote was this characteristic sentence : ' I feel that 
life is so short that I am not satisfied unless I do each 
day the best I can.' " 

Mr. Pratt was not willing to spend his life in accumu- 
lating millions except for a purpose. He once told Dr. 
Cuyler, " The greatest humbug in this world is the idea 
that the mere possession of money can make any man 
happy. I never got any satisfaction out of mine until I 
began to do good with it." 

He did not wish his wealth to build fine mansions for 
himself, for he preferred to live simply. He had no 
pleasure in display. "He needed," says his minister, 
Dr. Humpstone, "neither club nor playhouse to afford 
him rest; his home sufficed. For those who use such 
diversions he had no criticism. In these matters he was 
neither narrow nor ascetic. He was the brother of his 
own children. His home was to him the fairest spot on 
earth. He filled it with sunshine. Outside of his busi- 
ness, his church, and his philanthropy, it was his only 
sphere." 

He was a man of few words and much self-control. 
Dr. Humpstone relates this incident, told him by a 
friend : " Some one made upon Mr. Pratt, openly, a 
bitter personal attack. The future revealed that this 
charge was entirely unmerited, and the man who made 
it lived to regret his act ; but the moment revealed the 
greatness of our dead friend's love. He said no word ; 
only a face pale with pain revealed how determined 
was his effort at self-control, and how keen was his 



114 CHARLES PRATT. 

suffering. When his accuser turned to go, he bade him 
good-morning, as though he had left a blessing and 
not a bane behind him. As I recall the past at this 
moment, I think of no word he ever spoke in my hear- 
ing that was proof of an unloving spirit in him." 

For years Mr. Pratt had been thinking about indus- 
trial education ; " such education as enables men and 
women to earn their own living by applied knowledge 
and the skilful use of their hands in the various pro- 
ductive industries." He knew that the majority of 
young men and women are born poor, and must strug- 
gle for a livelihood, and, whether poor or rich, ought to 
know how to be self-supporting, and not helpless mem- 
bers of the community. The study of algebra and 
English literature might be a delight, but not all can 
be teachers or clerks in stores ; some must be machin- 
ists, carpenters, and skilled workmen in various trades. 

Mr. Pratt never forgot that he had been a poor boy. 
He never grew cold in manner and selfish in life. " He 
presented," says Mr. James MacAlister, President of 
the Drexel Institute, Philadelphia, "the rare spectacle 
of a rich man in strong sympathy with the industrial 
revolution that was progressing around him. His ar- 
dent desire was to recognize labor, to improve it, to 
elevate it; and his own experience taught him that 
the best way to do this was to put education into the 
handiwork of the laborer." 

Mr. Pratt gained information from all possible sources 
about the kind of an institution which should be built 
to provide the knowledge of books and the knowledge 
of earning a living. He travelled widely in his own 
country, corresponded with the heads of various schools. 



CHARLES PRATT. 115 

such as The Rose Polytechnic Institute at Terre Haute, 
Inch, the Institute of Technology in Boston, and with 
Dr. John Eaton, then Commissioner of Education, Dr. 
Felix Adler of New York, and others. Then Mr. Pratt 
took his son, Mr. F. B. Pratt, and his private secretary, 
Mr. Hemey, to twenty of the leading cities in England, 
France, Austria, Switzerland, and Germany, to see what 
the Old World was doing to educate her people in 
self-help. 

He found great industrial schools on the Continent 
supported by the city or state, where every boy or girl 
could learn the theory or practice, or both, of .the trade 
to be followed for a livelihood. On leaving the schools 
the pupils could earn a dollar or more a day. Our own 
country was sadly backward in such matters. The pub- 
lic schools had introduced manual training only to a 
very limited extent. Mr. Pratt determined to build 
an institute where any who wished to engage in " me- 
chanical, commercial, and artistic pursuits " should have 
a thorough " theoretic and practical knowledge." It 
t should dignify labor, because he believed there should 
be no idlers among rich or poor. It should teach " that 
personal character is of greater consequence than mate- 
rial productions." 

Mr. Pratt, on Sept. 11, 1885, bought a large piece of 
land on Eyerson Street, Brooklyn, a total of 32,000 
square feet, and began to carry out in brick and stone 
his noble thought for the people. He not only gave 
his millions, but he gave his time and thought in the 
midst of his busy life. He said, " The giving which 
counts, is the giving of one's self. The faithful teacher 
who gives his strength and life without stint or hope of 



116 CHARLES PRATT. 

reward, other than the sense of fidelity to duty, gives 
most ; and so the record will stand when our books are 
closed at the day of final accounting." 

Mr. Pratt at first erected the main building six stories 
high, 100 feet by 86, brick with terra-cotta and stone 
trimmings, and the machine-shop buildings, consisting 
of metal-working and wood-working shops, forge and 
foundry rooms, and a building 103 feet by 95 for brick- 
laying, stone-carving, plumbing, and the like. Later 
the high-school building was added ; and a library 
building has recently been erected, the library having 
outgrown its rooms. In the main building, occupying 
the whole fourth floor as well as parts of several other 
floors, is the art department of the Institute. Here, in 
morning, afternoon, and evening classes, under the best 
instructors, a three yearsj course in art may be taken, in 
drawing, painting, and clay-modelling; also courses in 
architectural and mechanical drawing, where in the ad- 
jacent shops the properties of materials and their power 
to bear strain can be learned. Many students take a 
course in design, and are thus enabled to win good posi-. 
tions as designers of book-covers, tiles, wall-papers, car- 
pets, etc. The normal art course of two years fits for 
teaching. Of those who left the Institute between 1890 
and 1893, having finished the course, seventy-six became 
supervisors of drawing in public schools, or teach art 
elsewhere, with salaries aggregating $47,620. Courses 
are also given in wood-carving and art needlework. 
Though there were but twelve in the class in the art 
department at the opening of the Institute in 1887, in 
three years the number of pupils had increased to about 
seven hundred. 



CHABLES PRATT. 117 

Mr. Pratt instituted another department in the main 
building, — that of domestic science. There are morn- 
ing, afternoon, and evening classes in sewing, cooking, 
and other household matters. A year's course, two les- 
sons a week, is given in dressmaking, cutting, fitting, 
and draping, or the course may be taken in six months 
if time is limited ; a course in millinery with five les- 
sons a week, and the full course in three months if the 
person has little time to give ; lectures in hygiene and 
home nursing, that women in their homes may know 
what to do in cases of sickness ; classes in laundry 
work, in plain and fancy cooking, and preparing food 
for invalids. There are Normal courses to fit teachers 
for schools and colleges to give instruction in house 
sanitation, ventilation, heating, cooking, etc. 

This department of domestic science has been most 
useful and popular. As many as 2,800 pupils have 
been enrolled in a single year. A club of men came 
to take lessons in cooking preparatory to • camp-life. 
Nurses come from the training-schools in hospitals to 
learn how to cook for invalids. Many teachers have 
gone out from this department. The Institute has not 
been able to supply the demand for sewing-women and 
dressmakers during the busy season. 

Mr. Pratt rightly thought "that a knowledge of 
household employments is thoroughly consistent with 
the grace and dignity and true womanliness of every 
American girl. . . . The housewife who knows how to 
manage the details of her home has more courage than 
one who is dependent upon servants, no matter how 
faithful they may be. She is a better mistress 5 for she 
can sympathize with them, and appreciate their work 
when well done." 



118 CHARLES PRATT. 

Mr. Pratt had another object in view, as he said, "To 
help those families who must live on small incomes, — 
say, not over $400 or $500 per year, — teaching the 
best disposition of this money in wise purchase, eco- 
nomical use of material, and little waste. One aim of 
this department is to make the home of the working- 
man more attractive." 

Mr. Pratt said in the last address which he ever made 
to his Institute : " Home is the centre from which the 
life of the nation emanates ; and the highest product of 
modern civilization is a contented, happy home. How 
can we help to secure such homes ? By teaching the 
people that happiness, to some extent at least, consists 
in having something to occupy the head and hand, and 
in doing some useful work." 

In the department of commerce, there are day and 
evening classes in phonography, typewriting, bookkeep- 
ing, commercial law, German, and Spanish, as the latter 
language, it is believed, will be used more in our com- 
mercial relations in the future. 

There is a department of music to encourage singing 
among the people, with courses in vocal music, and in 
the art of teaching music ; this has over four hundred 
students. In the department of kindergartens in the 
Institute Mr. Pratt took a deep interest. A model kin- 
dergarten is conducted with training-classes, and classes 
for mothers, who may thus be able to introduce it into 
their homes. The high-school department, a four years' 
course, combining the academic and the manual training, 
has proved very valuable. It was originally intended 
to make the Institute purely manual, but later it was 
felt to be wise to give an opportunity for a completer 



CHARLES PRATT. 119 

education by combining head-work and hand-work. The 
school day is from nine o'clock till three. Of the 
seven periods into which this time is divided, three are 
devoted to recitations, one to study, — the lessons are 
prepared at home, — one to drawing, and two to the work- 
shop, in wood, forging, tinsmithing, machine-tool work, 
etc. When the high school was opened, Mr. Pratt said, 
" We believe in the value of co-education, and are 
pleased to note the addition of more than twenty young 
women to this entering class." 

The high school has some excellent methods. " For 
making the machinery of National and State elections 
clear," says Mr. F. B. Pratt, the secretary of the Insti- 
tute and son of the founder, "the school has conducted 
a campaign and election in close imitation of the actual 
process. . . . Every morning the important news of 
the preceding day has been announced and explained 
by selected pupils." The Institute annually awards ten 
scholarships to ten graduates of the Brooklyn grammar 
schools, five boys and five girls, who pass the best 
entrance examinations for the high school of Pratt 
Institute. The pupils after leaving the high school are 
fitted to enter any scientific institution of college grade. 

Mr. Pratt was " so much impressed with the far- 
reaching influence of good books as distributed through 
a free library," that he established a library in the 
Institute for the use of the pupils, and for the public as 
well. It now has fifty thousand ^volumes, with a circu- 
lation of over two hundred thousand volumes. In 
connection with it, there are library training-classes, 
graduates of which have found good positions in vari- 
ous libraries. 



120 CHARLES PRATT. 

A museum was begun by Mr. Pratt in 1887, as an 
aid to the students in their work. The finest specimens 
of glass, earthenware, bronzes, iron-work, and minerals 
were obtained from the Old World, specimens of iron 
and steel from our own country to illustrate their manu- 
facture in the various articles of use ; much attention 
will be given to artistic work in iron after the manner 
of Quentin Matsys ; lace, ancient and modern ; all com- 
mon cloth, with kind of weave and price ; various wools 
and woollen goods from many countries. 

In the basement of the main building Mr. Pratt 
opened a lunch-room, a most sensible department, espe- 
cially for those who live at some distance from the 
Institute. Dinners at a reasonable price are served 
from twelve to two o'clock, and suppers three nights a 
week from six to seven p.m. Over forty thousand meals 
are served yearly. Soups, cold meats, salads, sand- 
wiches, tea, coffee, milk, and fruit are usually offered. 

Another thought of Mr. Pratt, who seemed not to 
overlook anything, was the establishing of an associa- 
tion known as "The Thrift." Mr. Pratt said, "Pupils 
are taught some useful work by which they can earn 
money. It seems a natural thing that the next step 
should be to endeavor to teach them how to save -this 
money ; or, in other words, how to make a wise use of 
it. It is not enough that one be trained so that he 
can join the bands of the world's workers and become 
a producer; he needs quite as much to learn habits of 
economy and thrift in order to make his life a success." 

"The Thrift" was divided into the investment 
branch and the loan branch. The investment shares 
were $150, payable at the rate of one dollar a month for 



CHARLES PRATT. 121 

ten years. The investor would then have $160. Any 
person could loan money to purchase a home, and make 
small monthly payments instead of rent. As many 
persons were unable to save a dollar a month, stamps 
were sold as in Europe ; and a person could buy them 
at any time, and these could, be redeemed for cash. In 
less than four years, the Thrift had 650 depositors, with 
a total investment of over $90,000. Twenty-four loans 
had been made, aggregating over $100,000. The total 
deposits up to 1895 were $260,000. 

Most interesting to me of all the departments of Pratt 
Institute are the machine-shops and the Trade School 
Building, where boys can learn a trade. "The aim of 
these trade classes," says Mr. F. B. Pratt, in the Inde- 
pendent for April 30, 1891, " is to afford a thorough 
grounding in the principles of a mechanical trade, and 
sufficient practice in its different operations to produce 
a fair amount of hand skill." The old apprenticeship 
system has been abandoned, and our boys, must learn 
to earn a living in some other way. The trades taught 
at Pratt Institute are carpentry, forging, machine-work, 
plastering, plumbing, blacksmithing, bricklaying, house 
and fresco painting, etc. There is an evening class of 
sheet-metal workers, who study patterns for cornices, 
elbows, and other designs in sheet-metal. Much atten- 
tion is given to electrical construction and to electricity 
in general. The day and evening classes are always 
full. Some of the master-mechanics' associations are 
cordial in their co-operation and examination of students 
through their committees. After leaving the Institute, 
work seems to be readily obtained at good wages. 

Mr. Pratt wished the instruction here to be of the 



122 CHARLES PRATT. 

best. He said, " The demand is for a better and better 
quality of work, and our American artisans must learn 
that to claim first place in any trade they must be in- 
telligent. . . . They must learn to have pride in their 
work, and to love it, and believe in our motto, ' Be true 
to your work, and your work will be true to you.' " 

The sons of the founder are alive to the necessities of 
the young in this direction. If it is true that out of the 
52,894 white male prisoners in the prisons and reforma- 
tory institutions of the United States in 1890 nearly 
three-fourths were native born, and 31,426 had learned 
no trade whatever, it is evident that one of the most 
pressing needs of our time is the teaching of trades to 
boys and young men. 

Mr. Charles M. Pratt, the president of the Institute, 
says in his Founder's Day Address in 1893 concerning 
technical instruction : " Our possible service here seems 
almost limitless. The President of the Board of Edu- 
cation of Boston in a recent address congratulated his 
fellow-citizens upon the fact that Boston has her system 
of public schools and kindergartens, and now, and but 
lately, her public school of manual training ; but what 
is needed, he said, 'is a school of technical training In 
the trades, such as Pratt Institute and other similar 
institutions furnish. I sincerely trust that the next 
five years of life and growth here will develop much 
in this direction. . . . We are willing to enlarge our 
present special facilities, or provide new ones for new 
trade-class requirements, as long as the demand for such 
opportunities truly exists.'" 

One rejoices in such institutions as the New York 
Trade Schools on First Avenue, between Sixty-seventh 



CHARLES PRATT. 123 

and Sixty-eighth Streets, with their day and evening- 
classes in plumbing, gasfitting, bricklaying, plastering, 
stone-cutting, fresco-painting, wood-carving, carpentry, 
and the like. A printing department has also been 
added. This work owes its inception and success to 
the brain and devotion of the late lamented Richard 
Tylden Auchinuty, who died in New York, July 18, 
1893. Mrs. Auchmuty, the wife of the founder, has 
given the land and buildings to the school, valued at 
$220,000, and a building-fund of $100,000. Mr. J. 
Pierpont Morgan has endowed the school with a gift 
of $500,000. 

Mr. Pratt did not cease working when his great Insti- 
tute was fairly started. He built in Greenpoint, Long 
Island, a large apartment building called the " Astral," 
five stories high, of brick and stone, with 116 suites of 
rooms, each suite capable of accommodating from three 
to six persons. The building cost $300,000, and is 
rented to workingmen and their families, the income 
to be used in helping to maintain the Institute. A pub- 
lic library was opened in the Astral, with the thought 
at first of using it only for the people in the building ; 
but it was soon opened to all the inhabitants of Green- 
point, and has been most heartily appreciated and used. 
Cut in stone over the fireplace in the reading-room of the 
Astral are the words, " Waste neither time nor money." 

When Mr. Pratt made his first address to the students 
of Pratt Institute on Founder's Day, Oct. 2, 1888, his 
birthday, taking the Bible from the desk, he said, before 
reading it and offering prayer, " Whatever I have done, 
whatever I hope to do, I have done trusting in the 
Power from above." 



124 CHARLES PRATT. 

Before he built the Institute many persons asked 
him to use his wealth in other ways ; some urged a 
Theological School, others a Medical School, but his in- 
terest in the workingman and the home led him to 
found the Institute. He rejoiced in the work and its 
outlook for the future. He said, " I am so grateful, so 
grateful that the Almighty has inclined my heart to do 
this thing." 

On the second and third Founder's Days, Mr. Pratt 
spoke with hope and the deepest interest in the work of 
the Institute. He had been asked often what he had 
spent for the work, and had prepared a statement at 
considerable cost of time, but with characteristic mod- 
esty he could never bring himself to make it public. 
" I have asked myself over and over again what good 
could result from any statement we could make of the 
amount of money we have spent. The quality and 
amount of service rendered by the Institute is the only 
fair estimate of its real value." 

In closing his address Mr. Pratt said, " To my sons 
and co-trustees, who will have this work to carry on 
when I am gone, I wish to say, " The world will over- 
estimate your ability, and will underestimate the value 
of your work ; will be exacting of every promise made 
or implied ; will be critical of your failings ; will often 
misjudge your motives, and hold you to strict account 
for all your doings. Many pupils will make demands, 
and be forgetful of your service to them. Ingratitude 
will often be your reward. When the day is dark, and 
full of discouragement and difficulty, you will need to 
look on the other side of the picture, which you will 
find full of hope and gladness." 



CHARLES PRATT. 125 

When the next Founder's Day came, Mr. Pratt was 
gone, and the Institute was in the hands of others. At 
the close of a day of work and thought in his New 
York office, Mr. Pratt fell at his post, May 4, 1891, and 
was carried to his home in Clinton Avenue, Brooklyn. 
After the funeral, May 7, memorial services were held 
in the Emmanuel Baptist Church on Sunday afternoon, 
May 17, with addresses by distinguished men who loved 
and honored him. 

A beautiful memorial chapel was erected by his fam- 
ily on his estate at Dosoris, Glen Cove, Long Island ; 
and there the body of Mr. Pratt was buried, July 31, 
1894. The chapel is of granite, in the Romanesque 
style, with exquisite stained glass windows. The main 
room is wainscoted with polished red granite, the arch- 
ing ceiling lined with glass mosaic in blue, gold, and 
green. At the farther end, in a semi-circular apse 
reached by two steps through an imposing arch, stands 
the sarcophagus of Siena marble, with the name, Charles 
Pratt, and dates of birth and death. The campanile 
contains the chime of bells so admired by everybody 
who visited the Columbian Exposition at Chicago, and 
heard it ring out from the central clock tower in the 
Building of Manufactures and Liberal Arts. Few, 
comparatively, will ever see this monument erected by 
a devoted family to a husband and father; but thou- 
sands upon thousands will see tlie monument which Mr. 
Pratt built for himself in his noble Institute. Every 
year thousands come to learn its methods and to copy 
some of its features, even from Africa and South Amer- 
ica. The Earl of Meath, who has done so much for the 
improvement of his race, said to Dr. Cuyler, " Of all the 



126 CHARLES PRATT. 

good things I have seen in America, there is none that 
I would so like to carry back to London as this splendid 
establishment." 

One may read in Baedeker's " Guide Book of the 
United States" instructions how to find "the extensive 
buildings of Pratt Institute, one of the best-equipped 
technical institutions in the world. None interested in 
technical education should fail to visit this institution." 

During his life, Mr. Pratt gave to the Institute about 
$ 3,700,000, and thus had the pleasure of seeing it bear 
fruit. Of this, $2,000,000 is the endowment fund. 
Small charges are made to the pupils, but not nearly 
enough to pay the running expenses. Mr. Pratt's sons 
are nobly carrying forward the work left to their care 
by their father, who died in the midst of his labors. 
Playgrounds have been laid out, a gymnasium provided, 
new buildings erected, and other measures adopted which 
they feel that their father would approve were he alive. 

Courses of free lectures are given at Pratt Institute to 
the public as well as the students ; a summer school is 
provided at Glen Cove, Long Island, for such as wish to 
learn about agriculture, with instruction given in botany, 
chemistry, physiology, raising and harvesting crops, and 
the care of animals ; nurses are trained in the care and 
development of children; a bright monthly magazine is 
published by the Institute; a Neighborship Association 
has been formed of alumni, teachers, and pupils, which 
meets for the discussion of such topics as " The relation 
of the rich to the poor," " The ethics of giving," " Citi- 
zenship," etc., and to carry out the work and spirit of 
the Institute wherever opportunity offers. 

Already the influence of Pratt Institute has been very 



CHARLES PRATT. 127 

great. Public schools all over the country are adopting 
some form of manual training whereby the pupils shall 
be better fitted to earn their living. Mr. Chas. M. Pratt, 
in one of his Founder's Day addresses, quotes the words 
of a successful teacher and merchant : " There is nothing 
under God's heaven so important to the individual as to 
acquire the power to earn his own living ; to be able to 
stand alone if necessary ; to be dependent upon no one ; 
to be indispensable to some one." 

About four thousand students receive instruction each 
year at the Institute. Many go out as teachers to other 
schools all over the country. As the founder said in his 
last address, "The world goes on, and Pratt Institute, 
if it fulfils the hopes and expectations of its founder, 
must go on, and as the years pass, the field of its influ- 
ence should grow wider and wider." 

On the day that he died, Mr. Herbert S. Adams, the 
sculptor, had finished a bust of Mr. Pratt in clay. It 
was put into bronze by the teachers and pupils, and now 
stands in the Institute, with these words of the founder 
cut in the bronze : " The giving which counts is the giving 
of one's self." 



THOMAS GUY 



AND HIS HOSPITAL. 



One day the rich Matthew Vassar stood before the 
great London hospital founded by Thomas Guy, and 
read these words on the pedestal of the bronze statue : — 

THOMAS GUY, 

SOLE FOUNDER OF THIS HOSPITAL IN HIS LIFETIME 
A.D. MDCCXXI. 

The last three words made a deep impression. Matthew 
Vassar had no children. He wished to leave his fortune 
where it would be of permanent value ; and lest some- 
thing might happen to thwart his plan, he had to do 
it in his lifetime. 

Sir Isaac Newton said, "They who give nothing till 
they die, never give at all." Several years before his 
death, Matthew Vassar built Vassar College near Pough- 
keepsie, N.Y. ; for he said, " There is not in our coun- 
try, there is not in the world so far as known, a single 
fully endowed institution for the education of women. 
It is my hope to be the instrument, in the hands of 
Providence, of founding and perpetuating an institu- 
tion which shall accomplish for young women what our 
colleges are accomplishing for young men." 

To this end he gave a million dollars, and was happy 
128 



THOMAS GUY. 129 

in the results. His birthday is celebrated each year 
as "Founder's Day." On one of these occasions he 
said, "This is almost more happiness than I can bear. 
This one day more than repays me for all I have done." 

And what of Thomas Guy, whose example led to Mat- 
thew Vassar's noble gift while the latter was alive ? He 
was an economical, self-made bookbinder and bookseller, 
who became the " greatest philanthropist of his day." 

Thomas Guy was born in Horselydown, South wark, 
in the outskirts of London, in 1644 or 1645. His father, 
Thomas Guy, was a lighterman and coalmonger, one who 
transferred coal from the colliers to the wharves, and 
also sold it to customers. He was a member of the 
Carpenters' Company of the city of London, and prob- 
ably owned some barges. 

His wife, Anne Vaughton, belonged to a family of 
better social position than her husband, as several of 
her relatives had been mayors in Tamworth, or held 
other offices of influence. 

When the boy Thomas was eight years old, his father 
died, leaving Mrs. Guy to bring up three small children, 
Thomas, John, and Anne. The eldest probably went to 
the free grammar school of Tamworth, and when fif- 
teen or sixteen years of age was apprenticed for eight 
years to John Clarke the younger, bookseller and book- 
binder in Cheapside, London. 

John Clarke was ruined in the great fire of Sept. 2, 
1666, which, says H. R. Fox Bourne in his "London 
Merchants," " destroyed eighty-nine churches, and more 
than thirteen thousand houses in four hundred streets. 
" Of the whole district within the city walls, four hundred 
and thirty-six acres were in ruins, and only seventy-five 



130 THOMAS GUY. 

acres were left covered. Property worth. £10,000,000 
was wasted, and thousands of starving Londoners had 
to run for their lives, and crouch for days and weeks on 
the bare fields of Islington and Hampstead, Southwark 
and Lambeth." 

What Thomas Guy was in his later life he probably 
was as a boy, — hard-working, economical, of good halt- 
its, and determined to succeed. When the eight years 
of apprenticeship were over he was admitted a freeman 
of the Stationers' Company ; and having a little means, 
he began a business at the junction of Cornhill and 
Lombard Streets, where he resided through his whole 
life. His stock of books at the beginning was worth 
about two hundred pounds. 

At this time many English Bibles were printed in 
Holland on account of the better paper and types found 
there, and vast numbers were imported to England with 
large profits. Young Guy, with business shrewdness, 
soon became an importer of Bibles, and very probably 
Prayer-books and Psalms. 

The King's printers were opposed to such importa- 
tions, and caused the arrest of booksellers and publish- 
ers, so that this Holland trade was largely broken up. 
It is said that the King's printers so raised the price 
of Bibles that the poor were unable to buy them. The 
privilege of printing was limited to London, York, and 
the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Then Lon- 
don and Oxford quarrelled over Bible printing, and each 
tried to undersell the other. 

Thomas Guy and Peter Parker printed Bibles for 
Oxford, had four presses in use within four months of 
their undertaking the Oxford work, and showed the 




THOMAS GUY. 



THOMAS GUY. 131 

greatest activity, skill, and energy in the enterprise. 
Their work was excellent, and some of their Bibles and 
other volumes are still found in the English libraries. 

These University printers, Parker & Guy, had many 
lawsuits with other firms, who claimed that the former 
had made £10,000, or even £15,000, by their connection 
with Oxford. Doubtless they had made money ; but 
they had done their work well, and deserved their 
success. 

Concerning Oxford Bibles, a writer in McClure's Mag- 
azine says, " In these days the privilege of printing a 
Bible is hardly less jealously guarded in the United 
Kingdom than the privilege of printing a banknote. It 
is accorded by license to the Queen's printers, and by 
charter to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge ; 
and it is, as a matter of fact, at the University of Ox- 
ford that the greatest bulk of the work is done. From 
this famous press there issue annually about one million 
copies of the sacred book ; copies ranging in price from 
tenpence to ten pounds, and in form from the brilliant 
Bible, which weighs in its most handsome binding less 
than four ounces, and measures 3^ by 2i by § inches, to 
the superb folio Bible for church use, the page of which 
measures 19 by 12 inches, which is the only folio Bible 
in existence — seventy-eight editions in all; copies in 
all manner of languages, even the most barbarous." 

The choicest paper is used, and the utmost care taken 
with setting the type. It is computed that to set up 
and " read " a reference Bible costs £1,000. 

" The first step is to make a careful calculation, show- 
ing what, in the particular type employed, will be the 
exact contents of each page, from the first page to the 



132 THOMAS GUY. 

last. It must be known before a single type is set just 
what will be the first and last word on each page. It is 
not enough that this calculation shall be approximate, 
it must be exact to the syllable. 

" The proofs are then read again by a fresh reader, 
from a fresh model ; and this process is repeated until, 
before being electrotyped, they have been read five times 
in all. Any compositor who detects an error in the 
model gets a reward ; but only two such rewards have 
ever been earned. Any member of the public who is 
first to detect an error in the authorized text is entitled 
to one guinea, but the average annual outlay of the press 
under this head is almost nil." 

As soon as Thomas Guy prospered, he gave to various 
causes. He gave five pounds to help rebuild the school- 
house at Tamworth, Avhere he had been a student a few 
years before ; and when a little over thirty years of age, 
in 1678, he bought some land in Tarn worth, and erected 
an almshouse for seven poor women. A good-sized room 
was used for their library. The whole cost was £200, 
a worthy beginning for a young man. 

A little later Mr. Guy gave ten pounds yearly to a 
" Spinning School," where the children of the poor were 
taught how to work, probably some kind of industrial 
training. Also ten pounds yearly to a Dissenting min- 
ister, and the same amount to one of the Established 
Church. 

When Mr. Guy was a little over forty, he gave another 
£200 for almshouses for poor men at Tarn worth ; and the 
town called him, " Our incomparable benefactor." 

When Mr. Guy was forty-five years of age, in 1690, 
he attempted to enter Parliament from Tamworth, but 



THOMAS GUY. 133 

was defeated. This was the second Parliament under 
William and Mary. In 1G94 he was elected sheriff of 
London, but refused to serve, perhaps on account of the 
expense, as he disliked display, and paid the penalty of 
refusing, £400. 

In the third Parliament, 1695, Mr. Guy tried again, 
and succeeded. He was re-elected after an exciting con- 
test in 1698, and again in 1701 and 1702, and in two 
Parliaments under Queen Anne. 

While in Parliament he built a town hall for the peo- 
ple of Tamworth. In 1708, after thirteen years of ser- 
vice, Mr. Guy was rejected. It is said that he promised 
the people of Tamworth, so much did he enjoy Par- 
liamentary life, that if they would elect him again he 
would leave his whole fortune to the town, so they 
should never have a pauper; but for once they forgot 
their " incomparable benefactor," and Thomas Guy in 
turn forgot them. 

" The cause of Guy's rejection," says the history of 
Tamworth, " is said to have been his neglect of the 
gastronomic propensities of his worthy, patriotic, and 
enlightened constituents, by whom the virtues of fast- 
ing appear to have been entirely forgotten. In the 
anger of the moment he threatened to pull down the 
town hall which he had built, and to abolish the alms- 
houses. The burgesses, repenting of their rash act, 
sent a deputation to wait upon Jiim with the offer of 
re-election in the ensuing Parliament, 1810; but he 
rejected all conciliation. He always considered that 
he had been treated with great ingratitude, and he 
deprived the inhabitants of Tamworth of the advan- 
tage of his almshouses." His will provided that per- 



134: THOMAS GUY. 

sons from certain towns might find a home in his 
almshouses, his own relatives to be preferred, should 
any offer themselves ; but Tamworth was left out of 
the list of towns. 

Mr. Guy already had become very wealthy. During 
the wars of William and Anne with Louis XIV., the 
soldiers and seamen were sometimes unpaid for years, 
from lack of funds. Tickets were given them, and they 
were willing to sell these at whatever price they would 
bring. Mr. Guy bought largely from the seamen, and 
has been blamed for so doing ; but his latest biographers, 
Messrs. Wilks and Bettany, in their interesting and val- 
uable " Biographical History of Guy's Hospital," think 
he did it with a spirit of kindness rather than of avarice. 
" It is at least consistent with his general philanthropy 
to suppose that, compassionating the poor seamen who 
could not get their money, he offered them more than 
they could get elsewhere, and that this accounts for his 
being so large a purchaser of seamen's tickets. Instead 
of being to his discredit, we think rather that it is to 
his credit, and that he managed to benefit a large num- 
ber of necessitous men, while at the same time, in the 
future, benefiting himself." 

Mr. Guy also made a great amount of money in the 
South Sea Company. With regard to the South Sea 
stock, says the Saturday Magazine, " Mr. Guy had no 
hand in framing or conducting that scandalous fraud ; 
he obtained the stock when low, and had the good sense 
to sell it at the time it was at its height." 

Chambers's " Book of Days " gives a very interesting 
account of this " South Sea Bubble." Harley, Earl of 
Oxford, who had helped Queen Anne to get rid of her 



THOMAS GUY. 135 

advisers, the Duke of Marlborough and the proud 
Duchess, Sarah, with a desire to "restore public credit, 
and discharge ten millions of the floating debt, agreed 
with a company of merchants that they should take the 
debt upon themselves for a certain time, at the interest 
of six per cent, to provide for which, amounting to 
£600,000 per annum, the duties for certain articles were 
rendered permanent. At the same time was granted the 
monopoly of trade to the South Seas, and the merchants 
were incorporated as the South Sea Company; and so 
proud was the minister of his scheme that it was called 
by his flatterers, ' The Earl of Oxford's Masterpiece. 7 " 

The South Sea Company, after a time, agreed to 
take upon themselves the whole of the national debt, 
£30,981,712, about $150,000,000. Sir John Blount, a 
speculator, first propounded the scheme. It was rumored 
that Spain, by treaty with England, would grant free 
trade to all her colonies, and that silver would thus be 
brought from Potosi, and become as plentiful as iron ; 
and that Mexico would part with gold in abundance for 
English cotton and woollen goods. It was also said 
that Spain, in exchange for Gibraltar and Port Mahon, 
would give up places On the coast of Peru. It was 
promised that each person who took £100 of stock 
would make fifty per cent, and probably much more. 
Mr. Guy took £45,500 of stock, probably the amount 
which the government owed him for seamen's tickets. 
Others who had claims " were empowered to subscribe 
the several sums due to them . . . for which he and the 
rest of the subscribers were to receive an annual inter- 
est of six per cent upon their respective subscriptions, 
until the same were discharged by Parliament." 



136 THOMAS GUY. 

The speculating mania spread widely. Great ladies 
pawned their jewels in order to invest. Lords were 
eager to double and treble their money. A journalist 
of the time writes : " The South Sea equipages increase 
daily j the city ladies buy South Sea jewels, hire South 
Sea maids, take new country South Sea houses ; the 
gentlemen set up South Sea coaches, and buy South Sea 
estates." 

The people seemed wild with speculation. All sorts 
of companies were established; one with ten million 
dollars capital to import walnut-trees from Virginia ; 
one with £ve million dollars capital for a " wheel for 
perpetual motion." An unknown adventurer started 
"a company for carrying on an undertaking of great 
advantage, but nobody to know what it is." Next 
morning this great man opened an office in Cornhill, 
and before three o'clock one thousand shares had been 
subscribed for at ten dollars a share, and the deposits 
paid. He put the ten thousand dollars in his pocket, 
set off the same evening for the Continent, and was 
never heard of again. He had assured them that nobody 
would know what the undertaking was, and he had kept 
his Avord. 

The South Sea stock rose in one day from 130 per 
cent to 300, and finally to 1,000 per cent. It then be- 
came known that Sir John Blount, the chairman, and 
some others had sold out, making vast fortunes. The 
price of stock began to fall, and at last the crisis 
brought ruin to thousands. The poet Gay, who had 
been given £20,000 of stock, and had thought himself 
rich, lost all, and was so ill in consequence that his 
life was in danger. Some men committed suicide on 



THOMAS GUY. 137 

account of their losses, and some became insane. Prior 
said, " I am lost in the South Sea. The roaring of the 
waves and the madness of the people are justly put 
together.' 7 The people were now as wild with anger as 
they had been intoxicated with hope for gain. They 
demanded redress, and the punishment of the directors 
of the South Sea Company. Men high in position were 
thrown into the Tower after it was found that the 
books of the company had been tampered with or de- 
stroyed, and large amounts of stock used to bribe men 
in office. The directors were fined over ten million dol- 
lars, and their fortunes distributed among the sufferers. 
Sir John Blount was allowed but £5,000 out of a for- 
tune of £183,000. The fortune of another, a million 
and a half pounds, was given to the losers. One man 
was treated with especial severity because he was re- 
ported to have said that "he would feed his carriage 
horses off gold." 

Mr. Guy, fearing that there was trickery when the 
stock rose so rapidly, sold out when the prices were 
from three to six hundred, and thereby saved himself 
from financial ruin. He was now very rich, having 
always lived economically. When he was a bookseller 
it is said that he always ate his dinner on his counter, 
using a newspaper for a tablecloth. 

The following story is told by Walter Thornbury in 
his " Old and New London : " — 

" ' Vulture ' Hopkins, so called from his alleged desire 
to seize upon gains, and who had become rich in South 
Sea stock, once called upon Mr. Guy to learn a lesson, 
as he said, in the art of saving. Being introduced into 
the parlor, Guy, not knowing his visitor, lighted a 



138 THOMAS GUY. 

candle; but when Hopkins said, 'Sir, I always thought 
myself perfect in the art of getting and husbanding 
money, but being informed that you far exceed me, I 
have taken the liberty of waiting upon you to be satis- 
fied on this subject.' Guy replied, ' If that is all your 
business, we can as well talk it over in the dark,' and 
immediately put out the candle. This was evidence 
sufficient for Hopkins, who acknowledged Guy to be his 
master, and took his leave." 

Notwithstanding Mr. Guy's penuriousness, he had 
the grace of gratitude. Thousands forget their helpers 
after prosperity comes to them. Not so Thomas Guy. 
The Saturday Magazine for Aug. 2, 1834, relates this 
incident : " The munificent founder of Guy's Hospital 
was a man of very humble appearance, and of a melan- 
choly cast of countenance. One day, while j>ensively 
leaning over one of the bridges, he attracted the atten- 
tion and commiseration of a bystander, who, apprehen- 
sive that he meditated self-destruction, could not refrain 
from addressing him with an earnest entreaty not to 
let his misfortunes tempt him to commit any rash act ; 
then, placing in his hand a guinea, with the delicacy of 
genuine benevolence he hastily withdrew. 

" Guy, roused from his revery, followed the stranger, 
and warmly expressed his gratitude, but assured him 
that he was mistaken in supposing him to be either in 
distress of mind or of circumstances, making an earnest 
request to be favored with the name of the good man, 
his intended benefactor. The address was given, and 
they parted. Some years later Guy, observing the name 
of his friend in the bankrupt list, hastened to his house, 
brought to his recollection their former interview ; found 



THOMAS GUY. 139 

upon investigation that no blame could be attached to 
him under his misfortunes ; intimated his ability and 
also his intention to serve him ; entered into immediate 
arrangements with his creditors ; and finally re-estab- 
lished him in a business which ever after prospered in 
his hands, and in the hands of his children's children, 
for many years in Newgate Street." 

Those who knew Mr. Guy best declared that "his 
chief design in getting money seems to have been with 
a view of employing the same in good works." He 
gave five guineas to Mr. Bo wye r, a printer, who had 
lost everything by fire, " not knowing," said Mr. Guy, 
"how soon it may be our own case." He also gave in 
1717 to the Stationer's Company £1,000, to be distrib- 
uted to poor members and widows at the rate of £50 
per annum. 

" Many of his poor though distant relations had stated 
allowances from him of £10 or £20 a year, and occa- 
sionally larger sums ; and to two of them he gave £500 
apiece to advance them in the world. He has several 
times given £50 for discharging insolvent debtors. He 
has readily given £100 at a time on application to him 
on behalf of a distressed family." 

In 1704 Mr. Guy was asked to become the governor 
of St. Thomas's Hospital, partly because he was a prom- 
inent and able citizen, and partly because he might thus 
become interested and give some money. Mr. Guy 
accepted the office, and soon built three new wards at 
a cost of £1,000, and provided the hospital with £100 
a year for the benefit of its poor. When patients left 
the hospital they were often unfit for work, and this 
money would provide food for them for a time. He had 



140 THOMAS GUY. 

given already to the steward money and clothes for 
such cases of need. He also built, in 1724, a new en- 
trance to St. Thomas's Hospital, improved the front, 
and erected two large brick houses, these works costing 
him £3,000. 

Mr. Guy seems to have given constantly from his 
youth, and always with good sense in his gifts. He 
was growing old. He probably had meditated long 
and carefully as to what use he should put his wealth. 
Highmore, in his " History of the Public Charities 
of London," tells this rather improbable story : " For 
the application of this fortune to charitable uses the 
public are indebted to a trifling circumstance. He 
employed a female servant whom he had agreed to 
marry. Some days previous to the intended ceremony 
he had ordered the pavement before his door to be 
mended up to a particular stone which he had marked, 
and then left his house on business. 

" The servant, in his absence, looking at the work- 
men, saw a broken stone beyond this mark which they 
had not repaired ; and on pointing to it with that design, 
they acquainted her that Mr. Guy had not ordered them 
to go so far. She, however, directed it to be done, 
adding, with the security incidental to her expectation 
of soon becoming his wife, ' Tell him I bade you, and 
he will not be angry.' But she soon learnt how fatal it 
is for one in a dependent position to exceed the limits 
of his or her authority ; for her master, on his return, 
was angered that they had gone beyond his orders, 
renounced his engagement to his servant, and devoted 
his ample fortune to public charity." 

In 1721, when Mr. Guy was seventy-six years of age, 



THOMAS GUY. 141 

he leased a large piece of ground of St. Thomas's Hos- 
pital for a thousand years at £30 a year, to erect upon 
it a great hospital for incurables ; " to receive and en- 
tertain therein four hundred poor persons, or upwards, 
laboring under any distempers, infirmities, or disorders, 
thought capable of relief by physic or surgery ; but 
who, by reason of the small hopes there may be of their 
cure, or the length of time which for that purpose 
may be required or thought necessary, are or may be 
adjudged or called incurable, and as such not proper 
subjects to be received into or continued in the present 
hospital, in and by which no provision has been made 
for distempers deemed or called incurable." 

While Mr. Guy had primarily in mind the poor and 
incurable, and the insane as well, in his will he directed 
the trustees to use their judgment about the length of 
time patients should remain, either for life or for a 
short period. Mr. Guy at once procured a plan for his 
hospital, and in the spring of 1722 laid the founda- 
tions. He went to the work "with all the expedition 
of a youth of fortune erecting a house for his own resi- 
dence." The original central building of stone cost 
£18,793. The eastern wing, begun in 1738, was com- 
pleted at a cost of £9,300 ; the western wing, in 1780, 
at a cost of £14,537. 

Mr. Guy lived to see his treasured gift roofed in be- 
fore his death, which occurred Dec. 27, 1724, in his 
eightieth year. In a little more than a week after- 
wards, Jan. 6, 1725, his hospital was opened, and sixty 
patients were admitted. 

After the death of Mr. Guy one thousand guineas 
were found in his iron chest; and as it was imagined 



142 THOMAS GUY. 

that these were placed there to defray his funeral ex- 
penses, they were used for that purpose. His body lay 
in state at Mercer's Hall, Cheapside, and was taken 
with " great funeral pomp " to the Parish Church of 
St. Thomas, Southwark, to rest there till the chapel at 
the hospital should be completed. Two hundred blue- 
coat boys from Christ's Hospital walked in the proces- 
sion, and sang before the hearse, which was followed by 
forty coaches, each drawn by six horses. 

Mr. Guy had not forgotten these " blue-coat boys " 
in his will, and left a perpetual annuity of £400 to 
educate four children yearly, with preference for his 
own relatives. The boys from Christ's Hospital al- 
ways interest tourists in London. They wear long blue 
gowns, yellow stockings, and knee-breeches. No cover 
is worn on their heads, even in winter. 

This school was founded by the boy king, Edward 
VI., for poor boys, though his father, Henry VIII., 
gave the building, which belonged to the Grey Friars, 
to the cit}' of London, but Edward caused the school to 
be established. It is a quaint and most interesting 
spot, where four queens and scores of lords and ladies 
are buried, — Margaret, second wife of Edward I. ; Isa- 
bella, the infamous wife of Edward II. ; Joan, daughter 
of Edward II., and wife of David Bruce, King of Scot- 
land ; and others. Twelve hundred boys study at the 
hospital. Lamb, Coleridge, and other famous men were 
among the blue-coats. The latter tells some interesting 
things about the school in his "Table-Talk." "The 
discipline at Christ's Hospital in my time was ultra- 
Spartan ; all domestic ties were to be put aside. ' Boy ! ' 
I remember Boyer saying to me once when I was crying 



THOMAS GUY. 143 

the first clay of my return after the holidays, ' boy ! the 
school is your father ; boy ! the school is your mother ; 
boy ! the school is your brother ; the school is your 
sister ; the school is your first cousin, and your second 
cousin, and all the rest of your relatives. Let's have 
no more crying ! ' 

"No tongue can express good Mrs. Boyer. Val Le 
Grice and I were once going to be flogged for some 
domestic misdeed, and Boyer was thundering away at 
us by way of prologue, when Mrs. B. looked in and 
said, ' Flog them soundly, sir, I beg ! ' This saved 
us. Boyer was so nettled by the interruption that he 
growled out, 'Away, woman! away!' and we were let 
off." 

While Mr. Guy remembered the blue-coat orphans, he 
seemed to have remembered everybody else in his will. 
So much were the people interested in the lengthy doc- 
ument with its numerous gifts, that the will went 
through three editions the first year of its publication. 
Mr. Guy gave to every living relative, even to distant 
cousins — in all over £75,000. These were mainly gifts 
of £1,000 each at four per cent, so that each one re- 
ceived £40 a year. These legacies were called " Guy's 
Thousands." If the recipients were under age, the in- 
terest was to be used for his or her education and 
apprenticeship. 

One thousand pounds were given for the release of 
poor prisoners for debt in London, Middlesex, or Surrey, 
in sums not to exceed five pounds each. About six 
hundred persons were thus set at liberty. Another 
thousand pounds were left to the trustees to relieve 
" such poor people, being housekeepers, as in their 



144 THOMAS GUY. 

judgments shall be thought convenient." The interest 
on more than £2,000 was left for " putting out children 
apprentices, nursing, or such like charitable deed." 

Then followed the great gift of nearly a million and 
a half dollars for the hospital. After the buildings 
were erected, the remainder was to be used "in the 
purchase of lands or reversions in fee simple, so that 
the rents might be a perpetual provision for the sick." 
Considerably over a million dollars were thus expended 
in purchasing over 8,000 acres in Essex, a large estate 
of the Duke of Chandos, for £60,800, and other tracts 
of land and houses. 

About six years after the death of the founder, a 
bronze statue of him by Scheymaker was erected in the 
open square in front of the hospital, costing five hundred 
guineas. On the pedestal are representations of the 
Good Samaritan, Christ healing the sick, and Mr. Guy's 
armorial bearings. In the chapel a marble statue of 
Mr. Guy, costing £1,000, was erected by Mr. Bacon in 
1779. The founder is represented as holding out one 
hand to raise a poor invalid lying on the earth, and 
pointing with the other hand to a person carried on a 
litter into one of the hospital wards. On the pedestal 
is an inscription beginning with these words, — 

UNDERNEATH ARE DEPOSITED THE REMAINS OF 

THOMAS GUY, 

CITIZEN OF LONDON, MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT, AND THE SOLE 
FOUNDER OF THIS HOSPITAL IN HIS LIFETIME. 

In 1788 the noble John Howard visited Guy's Hos- 
pital ; and while he found some of the wards too low, 
being only nine feet and a half high, in the new wards 



THOMAS GUY. 14.*) 

he praised the iron bedsteads and hair beds as being 
clean and wholesome. 

For over one hundred and seventy years Guy's Hos- 
pital has done its noble work. Departments have been 
added for special treatment of the eye, the ear, the teeth, 
the throat, etc., while thousands of mothers are cared 
for at their homes at the birth of their children. 

In 1829, at his death, another governor of Guy's 
Hospital, Mr. William Hunt, left £180,000 to the hos- 
pital. He was buried in the vault under the chapel by 
the side of Thomas Guy. After some years, Hunt's 
House, a large central block, with north and south 
wings of brick with stone facings, was erected, the 
whole costing nearly £70,000. From time to time 
other needed buildings have been added, such as labo- 
ratories, museums, etc. There are now in the hospital 
over seven hundred beds. Only a few beds are reserved 
for those who can afford to pay; with this exception 
patients are admitted to all parts of the hospital free 
of charge. " The Royal Guide to London Charities," 
compiled by Herbert Fry, says, " "No recommendation is 
needed for admission to this hospital. Sickness allied 
to poverty is an all-sufficient qualification." A fund 
has been established for relieving the families of de- 
serving and poor patients while they are in the hospital. 
This is not only a blessing to the dependent ones, but 
prevents the anxiety and worry of the suffering inmates. 

Guy's Hospital now receives into its wards yearly 
over 6,000 patients, and affords medical relief to about 
70,000. The annual income of the hospital is about 
£40,000. Saving, industrious Thomas Guy wrought 
even better things for humanity than he could have 



146 THOMAS GUY. 

hoped. It paid him to use a newspaper on his counter 
instead of a tablecloth for his meals, if every year 
thousands of poor men and women could be cared for 
in sickness without money, walk about his pleasant six 
acres during convalescence, and bless forever the name 
of Thomas Guy. What a contrast such a life to that 
of one who spends his wealth in fine houses, parties, 
expensive yachts, and self-indulgence ! 

In 1825 Guy's Medical School was opened in connec- 
tion with the hospital, and has proved a great success. 
" It has become world-famed," write Messrs. Wilks and 
Bettany, " and has received pupils from all English- 
speaking lands, and not a few foreigners." Of Guy's 
Hospital Keports which began to be published in 1836, 
they say, " Nothing, perhaps, has done more to estab- 
lish the reputation of Guy's Hospital abroad than these 
Reports. They may be found in the best libraries in 
Europe and in America, and have been well perused 
by many of the leading men on the Continent." 

Those who wish to study medicine at Guy's have to 
pass a preliminary examination in arts, and take a five 
years' course. During four years " the time is equally 
divided between the study of the elements of medical 
science and clinical instruction in the practice of the 
profession." The last year is chiefly devoted to hospital 
practice. With this amount of study it is easily seen 
why Guy's Medical School takes high rank. 

On March 26, 1890, a college built of red brick was 
formally opened by Mr. Gladstone. It cost £21,000, 
and is for the resident staff and students. A gymnasium 
was built also in 1890. 

Guy's Hospital has been fortunate in the noted men 



THOMAS GUY. 147 

who have been connected, with it. One of its early sur- 
geons, John Belchier, lies buried in the same vault with 
Thomas Guy. He fell in his office ; and his servant, not 
being able to lift him, as he was a heavy man, offered 
to go for assistance. " No, John, I am dying," he said. 
" Fetch me a pillow ; I may as well die here as any- 
where else." It is related of him that, seeing the van- 
ity of all earthly riches, he desired to be buried in the 
hospital, with iron nails in his coffin, which was to be 
filled with sawdust. 

The learned Dr. Walter Moxou, who has been called 
from his combination of tenderness and ability " the per- 
fect physician," was associated with Guy's Hospital for 
twenty years. Dr. Wilks says, in the garden of Dr. 
Moxon, " In the winter lumps of suet and cocoanut sawn 
in rings were hung upon the arches and boughs for the 
benefit of the tits, and loaves of bread were broken 
up for the blackbirds, thrushes, finches, and sparrows. 
Always before taking his own breakfast oh a winter's 
morning, Moxon first saw to the feeding of his feathered 
friends." 

Dr. Eichard Bright, whose name is given to the dis- 
ease which he so carefully studied, was for years con- 
nected with Guy's Hospital. He wrote valuable books, 
and was an untiring student. " He was sincerely reli- 
gious, both in doctrine and in practice, and of so pure a 
mind that he never was heard to Utter a sentiment or to 
relate an anecdote that was not fit to be heard by the 
merest child or the most refined woman." 

Sir Astley Paston Cooper was associated with Guy's 
for twenty-five years. His father was a clergyman, and 
his mother an author. It is said that he was first at- 



148 THOMAS GUY. 

tracted towards surgery by an accident to one of his 
foster-brothers. The youth fell from a heavy wagon, 
the wheels of which passed over his body, tearing the 
flesh from the thigh and injuring an artery, from which 
the blood flowed freely. Nobody seemed to know how 
to stop the blood, when Astley, a boy scarcely more than 
twelve, took out his handkerchief, and tied it tightly 
around the thigh and above the wound, thus staying 
the blood till a surgeon could be brought. Sir Ast- 
ley used to say this accident, which resulted so well, 
created in his mind a love for surgery. His uncle, 
William Cooper, was a surgeon at Guy's, and encour- 
aged his nephew's inclination for the medical profes- 
sion. At twenty-three Sir Astley married a lady of 
wealth, lecturing on surgery on the evening of his wed- 
ding-day without any of the pupils being aware of his 
marriage. The first year of his practice he received 
£5 5s. ; the second year, £26 ; the third year, £54 ; the 
fourth year, £96 ; the fifth year, £100 ; the sixth year, 
£200 ; the seventh, £400 ; the eighth, £610 ; the ninth, 
£1,100. When he was in the zenith of his fame he re- 
ceived £21,000 in one year. One merchant paid him 
£600 yearly. For a successful operation he was some- 
times paid one thousand guineas. Each year he is said 
to have given £2,000 or £3,000 to poor relations. 

" In his busy years," writes Dr. Samuel Wilks, " he 
rose at six, dissected privately until eight, and from 
half-past eight saw large numbers of patients gratui- 
tously. At breakfast he ate only two well-buttered hot 
rolls, drank his tea cool, at a draught, read his paper a 
few minutes, and then was off to his consulting-room, 
turning round with a sweet, benign smile as he left the 



THOMAS GUY. 149 

room." At one o'clock lie would scarcely see another 
patient. " Sometimes the people in the hall and the 
anteroom were so importunate that Mr. Cooper was 
driven to escape through his stables and into a passage 
by Bishopsgate Church. At Guy's he was awaited by 
a crowd of pupils on the steps, and at once went into 
the wards, addressing the patients with such tenderness 
of voice and expression that he at once gained their con- 
fidence. His few pertinent questions and quick diag- 
nosis were of themselves remarkable, no less than the 
judicious, calm manner in which he enforced the neces- 
sity for operations when required." 

At two o'clock Sir Astley Cooper went across the 
street to St. Thomas's Hospital to lecture on anatomy. 
"After the lecture, which was often so crowded that 
men stood in the gangways and passages near to gain 
such portion of his lecture as they might fortunately 
pick up, he went round the dissecting-room, and after- 
wards left the hospital to visit patients or to operate 
privately, returning home at half-past six or seven. 
Every spare minute in his carriage was occupied with 
dictating to his assistants notes or remarks on cases or 
other subjects on which he was engaged. At dinner he 
ate rapidly, and not very elegantly, talking and joking ; 
after dinner he slept for ten minutes at will, and then 
started to his surgical lecture, if it were a lecture night. 
In the evening he was usually again on a round of visits 
till midnight." 

Sir Astley received a baronetcy and a fee of £500 for 
successfully removing a small tumor from the head of 
George IV. He wrote several books, and was president 
of various societies. He was as famous abroad as at 



150 THOMAS GUT. 

home. The king of the French bestowed upon him the 
decoration of the Legion of Honor. He died of dropsy 
in 1841 in his chair, surrounded by his friends, saying, 
as he passed away, " God bless you ; adieu to you all," 
and was buried under the chapel near Thomas Guy. 
His only child died in infancy. There is a statue of 
Sir Astley in St. Paul's Cathedral, and a bust of him in 
the museum of Guy's. He said of himself : " My own 
success depended upon my zeal and industry ; but for 
this I take no credit, as it was given to me from 
above." He is said to have left a fortune of half a 
million of dollars. 

The beloved Frederick Denison Maurice was elected 
chaplain of Guy's Hospital in 1836, when he was thirty - 
one. He wrote to a friend, " If I could get any influ- 
ence over the medical students I should indeed think 
myself honored ; and though some who have had expe- 
rience think such a hope quite a dream, I still venture 
to entertain it." There seems no reason why a medical 
student, or any student indeed, should be rough in man- 
ner or hard of heart. A true man will be a gentleman 
not less in the dissecting-room than in the parlor. He 
will be humane to the lowest animal, and tender and 
considerate in the presence of suffering. 

Sir William Withey Gull, the son of a barge-owner 
and wharfinger in Essex, who rose to eminence by his 
power of work and will, was for twenty years physician 
and lecturer at Guy's Hospital. Going there as a stu- 
dent when he was twenty-one, he was told by the treas- 
urer, " I can help you if you will help yourself." He 
used to say that his real education was given him by 
his sweet-faced mother. He won many prizes, acted as 



THOMAS GUY. 151 

tutor to gain the means of living, and made friends by 
his winsome manner as well as his knowledge. The 
lady to whom he was engaged died, but her father was 
so attached to young Gull that he left him a consider- 
able legacy. Mr. Gull afterwards married a sister of 
his friend Dr. Lacy. He rose rapidly in his profession, 
and was made F.R.S. in 1869, having been made LL.D. 
of Oxford and Cambridge the previous year. 

His knowledge was profound on many subjects, — 
poetry, philosophy, and of course medicine. His indus- 
try was astonishing to all, and his personal influence re- 
markable. " Not many years ago," says Dr. Wilks," we 
heard an old student of Guy's descant on his beau- 
tiful lectures, and especially those on fever. On being 
questioned as to what Gull said which most struck him, 
he said he could not remember anything in particular, 
but he would come to London any day to hear Gull reit- 
erate the words in very slow measure, ' Now typhoid, 
gentlemen.' . . . When Gull left the bedside of his pa- 
tient, and said in measured tones, ' You will get well/ it 
was like a message from above. ... It was not pene- 
tration only which Gull possessed, but endurance. It 
was ever being remarked with what deliberate care he 
went over every case, as if that particular one was his 
sole charge for the day." 

Dr. Gull attended the Prince of Wales in his very 
severe illness from typhoid fever in 1871, when his life 
was despaired of ; and for this he was created a baronet, 
and Physician Extraordinary to the Queen. He died of 
apoplexy, Jan. 29, 1890, leaving a fortune of £344,000 
(over a million and a half of dollars), largely earned by 
his own industry and ability. His son, Sir Cameron 



152 THOMAS GUY. 

Gull, has founded a studentship of pathology at Guy's, 
worth about £150 per annum. Sir William was buried, 
by his own desire, in his native village, Thorpe-le-Soken, 
beside his father and mother. 

Thomas Guy has slept for over a century in the midst 
of the great work which his fortune began and still car- 
ries forward. "Who shall estimate the good done every 
year to six thousand suffering persons, mostly poor, who 
need the care and skill of a great hospital, and to sev- 
enty thousand, or two hundred daily, who come for 
medical treatment ? The fact that Thomas Guy be- 
came rich through industry, economy, and business 
sagacity will be forgotten; the fact that he was a 
member of Parliament for thirteen years is of little 
moment ; but the fact that he gave his wealth to 
bless the world will be remembered as long as Eng- 
land lasts, or humanity suffers. 



SOPHIA SMITH 



AND HER COLLEGE FOR WOMEN. 



Miss Sophia Smith, the founder of Smith College, 
came from a family of savers as well as givers. Self- 
indulgent persons rarely give. 

She was the niece of Oliver Smith, whose unique char- 
ities have been a blessing to many towns. Mr. Smith, 
who died at Hatfield, Mass., Dec. 22, 1845, left to the 
towns of Northampton, Hadley, Hatfield, Amherst, and 
Williamsburg, in the county of Hampshire, and Deer- 
field, Greenfield, and Whately, in the county .of Franklin, 
about a million dollars to a Board of Trustees, to be used 
as follows : — 

To be set aside for sixty years from the time of his 
death, so as to double and treble itself, for an Agricul- 
tural School at Northampton, $30,000. In 1894, forty- 
nine years after Mr. Smith died, this fund had become 
$190,801.15, so rapidly does interest accumulate. This 
will be used to purchase two farms, one a Pattern Farm, 
to become a model to all farmers ; the other an Experi- 
mental Farm, to aid the Pattern Farm in the art and 
science of husbandry and agriculture. Buildings are to 
be erected on the grounds suitable for mechanics, and 
workshops for the manufacture of implements of hus- 
bandry of the most approved models. If the income 

153 



154 SOPHIA SMITH. 

will warrant it, tools for other trades may be manu- 
factured. 

There is also to be a School of Industry on the farms 
for the benefit of the poor. The boys to be aided must 
be from the poorest in the town, are to receive a good 
common education, and be taught in agriculture or in 
some mechanic art in the shops on the premises. When 
twenty-one years of age they are to be loaned $200 
each, and after paying interest for five years at five 
per cent are to receive the $200 as a gift, if they have 
proved themselves worthy. Three years before they 
are twenty-one, each is to to have a portion of his time 
to earn for himself. 

After a bequest of $10,000 to the American Coloniza. 
tion Society, Mr. Smith's will provided that his property 
should go to poor boys and girls, poor young women 
and widows. The boy, not under twelve, of good moral 
character, should be bound out to some respectable 
family, and receive at twenty-one, if he had been a 
faithful apprentice, a loan of $500, and after five years 
the gift in full to help him make a start in the world. 

The girl so bound out, if maintaining a good moral 
character, should receive $300 as a marriage portion, if 
the man she was -to marry seemed a worthy man. If he 
was unworthy, the girl was to be aided in sickness or 
mental derangement up to the full amount of the mar- 
riage portion. 

Each young woman in indigent or moderate circum- 
stances, if she were to marry a sober man, could, by 
applying to the trustees, receive a marriage portion of 
fifty dollars, to be expended for necessary articles of 
household furniture. Each widow, with a child or chil- 




SOPHIA SMITH. 



SOPHIA SMITH. 155 

dren dependent on her for support, could receive fifty 
dollars ; and this might be given yearly if the trustees 
thought wise. 

Mr. Smith lived and died unmarried; but he knew 
that the pathway of many struggling lovers would be 
made easier if the young woman had even fifty dollars, 
or, if the girl had been bound out with strangers, $300 
would make many a little home after marriage com- 
fortable. 

Mr. Smith has been dead over half a century, but his 
quaint and beautiful gift has been doing its work. Dur- 
ing the year 1894, 51 boys and 17 girls were placed in 
good homes, and reared for useful lives. Nine received 
their marriage portion, and sixteen were helped in sick- 
ness. Thirty boys received their loan of $ 500 each, 
and thirty their gift of a like amount. There are now 
apprenticed 137 boys and 38 girls. Marriage gifts were 
made to 118 young women, and $50 were paid to each 
of 116 widows. Last year 289 persons received gifts to 
the amount of $30,785. AVhat happiness this money 
means to those for the most part just looking out into 
the cares and work of life ! How many fortunes are 
built on that first $500 so difficult to accumulate ! 
How many homes kept from dire poverty by that first 
$300 with which to make the place attractive as well 
as comfortable ! What an incentive for a boy or girl to 
be industrious, saving, temperate, and upright ! What 
a comfort to feel that after we are silent our work can 
speak for us through a whole State, and even a whole 
nation ! 

Mr. Oliver Smith depended much upon his nephew, 
Austin Smith, a successful and wealthy man, to carry 



156 SOPHIA SMITH. 

out his wishes. Austin and his brother Joseph were 
members of the General Court of Massachusetts. When 
their father died, though he was not wealthy like Oliver, 
he left his two sons the larger part of his fortune, and 
his two daughters, Harriet and Sophia, enough to sup- 
port them with close economy. The father was a sol- 
dier in the Revolutionary War ; and the grandfather, 
Samuel Smith, was commissioned lieutenant in 1755 
by Governor Phipps. 

Sophia, who must have been a sweet-faced girl, judg- 
ing from her appearance in later life, was eager for 
study ; but there was little chance for a girl to obtain an 
education, and little sympathy, as a rule, with those 
girls who desired it. She was born in Hatfield, Mass., 
Aug. 27, 1796. When Sophia was a little girl, Abigail 
Adams, the noble wife of John Adams, our second 
president, wrote to a friend in England, " You need not 
be told how much, in this country, female education is 
neglected, nor how fashionable it is to ridicule female 
learning." 

Mrs. Samuel D. (Locke) Stow, in a history of Mount 
Holyoke Seminary, shows how meagre were the early 
advantages for girls. " Boston did not permit girls to 
attend the public schools till 1790, and then only during 
the summer months, when there were not boys enough 
to fill them. This lasted till 1822, when Boston became 
a city. An aged resident of Hatfield used to tell of 
going to the schoolhouse when she was a girl, and sitting 
on the doorstep to hear the boys recite their lessons. 
No girl could cross the threshold as a scholar. The 
girls of Northampton were not admitted to the public 
schools till 1792. In the Centennial Hampshire Gazette 



SOPHIA SMITH. 157 

it was stated : l In 1788 the question was before the 
town, and it was voted not to be at any expense for 
schooling girls.' The advocates of the measure were 
persistent, however, and appealed to the courts ; the 
town was indicted and fined for this neglect. In 1792 
it was voted by a large majority to admit girls between 
the ages of eight and fifteen to the schools from May 1 
to Oct. 31. It was not till 1802 that all restrictions 
were removed." 

These summer schools from May to October were of 
comparatively little worth. All children brought their 
work, braiding, sewing, and knitting, and were taught to 
read and write, and to have " good manners," according 
to the accepted notions of the time. " At first arithme- 
tic and geography were taught only in the winter, for 
a knowledge of numbers or ability to cast accounts was 
deemed quite superfluous for girls. When Colburn's 
Mental Arithmetic was introduced, some of our mothers 
who desired to study it were told derisively, <If you 
expect to become widows, and have to carry pork to 
market, it may be well enough to study mental arith- 
metic' 

"The first school in New England," says Mrs. Stow, 
" designed exclusively for the instruction of girls in 
branches not taught in the common schools, is said to 
have been an evening school conducted by William 
Woodbridge, who was a graduate of Yale in 1780. His 
theme on graduation was, ' Improvement in Female Edu- 
cation.' Reducing his theory to practice, in addition 
to his daily occupation he gave his evenings to the 
instruction of girls in Lowth's Grammar, Guthrie's 
Geography, and the art of composition. The popular 



158 SOPHIA SMITH. 

sentiment deemed him visionary. ' Who,' it said, l shall 
cook our food and mend our clothes if the girls are to 
be taught philosophy and astronomy ? ' In Waterf ord, 
N.Y., in 1820, occurred the public examination of a 
young lady in geometry. It was the first instance of 
the kind in the State, and perhaps in the country, and 
called forth a storm of ridicule. Her teacher was Mrs. 
Emma Willard." 

Sophia Smith's girlhood was passed during this indif- 
ference or opposition to education for women. When 
she was fourteen, in 1810, she went to school in Hart- 
ford, Conn., for twelve weeks ; and four years later, at 
eighteen, she was for a short time a pupil in the Hopkin ■, 
Academy in Hadley. She studied diligently with her 
quick, eager mind, and was thankful for these crumbs 
of knowledge, though she lamented through her life 
that her opportunities had been so limited. 

Year by year went by in the quiet New England 
home, her sister Harriet taking upon herself the burden 
of household cares and business, as Sophia was frail, 
and at forty had become very deaf. Her mind had been 
broadened, and her heart kept tender to every sorrow, 
by her Christian faith and devotion to duty. The town 
of Hatfield had capable ministers, who were intellectual 
as well as spiritual helpers, and Sophia Smith enjoyed 
cultivated minds. 

" By reading mostly," says the Rev. John M. Greene 
of Lowell, Mass., " she kept herself familiar with the 
common events and occurrences of the day. Probably 
what she and others called a calamity was a blessing to 
her. She had fortitude to bear the trial, and the wis- 
dom to improve the reflective and meditative powers of 



SOPHIA SMITH. 159 

her mind, far beyond what the fashionable and gossip- 
ing woman attains. Deafness is an admirable remedy 
for insincerity, shallowness, and foolish talking. It 
sifts what we hear, and compels us to try to say what 
is worth attention." 

Miss Smith attended the services of the Congrega- 
tional Church, of which she was a member ; and though 
she could not hear a word of the sermon perhaps, she 
felt accountable for the influence of her presence. She 
loved the Bible, and would quote the words of Sir Wil- 
liam Jones : " The Bible contains more true sublimity, 
more exquisite beauty, more pure morality, more impor- 
tant history, and finer strains of poetry and eloquence, 
than can be collected from all other books, in whatever 
age or language they have been written." She had the 
strength of character of the typical New England 
woman, yet possessing gentle manners and most refined 
tastes. 

She loved nature ; and in Hatfield, with its magnificent 
elms and beautiful river, Miss Smith had much to enjoy. 
Some of these great elms measure twenty-eight feet in 
circumference, three yards from the ground. 

In this charming scenery, reading her books, and do- 
ing good as she had opportunity, Miss Smith was grow- 
ing old. Her sister Harriet had died a little before the 
time of our Civil War, and the lonely woman bent her 
energies towards helping other -aching hearts. She 
worked with her own hands to aid the soldiers and their 
families, and when she had the means used it gene- 
rously. 

Her brother Austin died March 8, 1861 ; and very un- 
expectedly Sophia Smith became the possessor, through 



160 SOPHIA SMITH. 

his gift, of over $200,000. " God permitted him," says 
the Rev. Mr. Greene, to " gather the gold, preparing all 
the while the heart of a devout and Christlike sister 
to dispense it." 

Miss Smith at once felt her great responsibility. 
Some persons living all their lives most carefully would 
have rejoiced at the opportunity to buy comforts, — a 
carriage for daily riding, attractive clothes, more books, 
or take a journey to the Old World or elsewhere. But 
Miss Smith said at once, "This is a large property put 
into my hands, but I am only the steward of God in 
respect to it." She very wisely sought the advice of 
her pastor, the Rev. John M. Greene, a man of broad 
scholarship and generous nature. Dr. Greene was a 
lover of books ; and finding so much happiness for him- 
self in a student's life, he rightly thought that woman 
should have the bliss of possessing knowledge for her 
own sake, as well as for her increased influence in the 
world. 

Miss Smith desired so to give as would accord with 
the wishes of her brother Austin were he alive, but 
could not be sure what were his preferences. She 
wished to give the money for education ; for that was 
her great joy, mingled with regret that her way, as that 
of every other woman at that time, had been so hedged 
up by mistaken public opinion. 

She longed to build a college for women, even when 
learned doctors wrote books to show that girls would be 
ruined in health by study, and that they were mentally 
inferior to the other sex. It was said that women 
would not care for higher education ; that if they went 
to college they would not marry, and would cease to be 



SOPHIA SMITH. 161 

attractive to men ; that in any event the -intellectual 
standard would be lowered if women were admitted to 
any college. 

Miss Smith said, "There is no justice in denying 
women equal educational advantages with men. Women 
are the natural educators and physicians of the race, 
and they ought to be fitted for their work." When the 
foolish and untrue argument was used, that educated 
women do not make good wives and mothers, Miss 
Smith would say, " Then they are wrongly educated — 
some law is violated in the process." 

Miss Smith had read history, and she knew that the 
Aspasias and the De Maintenons are the women who 
have had the strongest power with men. She knew 
that an educated woman is the companion of her chil- 
dren and their intellectual guide. She knew that 
women ought to be interested in the welfare of the 
state, rather than in a round of parties and amuse- 
ments. She had no love for display, though she had 
taste in dress and in her home ; and she longed to see all 
women have a purpose in life other than frivolity and 
pleasure-seeking. But Miss Smith feared that $200,- 
000 would not be sufficient to* found a college for 
women, and gave up the idea. Two months after her 
brother died she made her will, giving $75,000 for an 
Academy at Hatfield, $100,000 to a Deaf Mute Institu- 
tion in Hatfield, and $50,000 to -a Scientific School in 
connection with Amherst College. Six years later Mr. 
John Clarke provided a deaf mute institution for the 
Commonwealth, and Miss Smith was at liberty to turn 
her fortune into another channel. 

The old idea of a real college for women, a project as 



162 SOPHIA SMITH. 

dear to Dr. Greene as to herself, was again upon her 
mind. She read all she could find upon the subject. 
She loved and believed in her own sex, and knew the 
low intellectual standard of the ordinary boarding-school. 
She said, " We should educate the whole woman, physi- 
cal, intellectual, moral, and spiritual." She insisted 
that the education given in the college which she hoped 
to found should be equal to that obtained in a college 
for men. 

"There is a good deal that is heroic," says a writer in 
Scribner's Monthly, May, 1877, " in the spectacle of this 
lonely woman, shut out in a great measure by her in- 
firmity and secluded life from so many human interests 
and pleasures, quietly elaborating a plan by which she 
could broaden and enrich the lives of multitudes of her 
sex, and give increased dignity and power to woman in 
the generations to come." 

In July, 1868, Miss Smith made her last will, stating 
the object for which she wished her money to be used : 
" The establishment and maintenance of an institution 
for the higher education of young women, with the de- 
sign to furnish them means and facilities for education 
equal to those which are afforded in our colleges for 
young men." 

" The formal wording," says M. A. Jordan in the 
New England Magazine for January, 1887, " hardly 
tells the story of self-denial, painful industry, common- 
place restriction and isolation, that lies behind it in the 
lives of this brother and sister." 

Miss Smith wished the college to be Christian, " not 
Congregational," she said, "or Baptist, or Methodist, or 
Episcopalian, but Christian" She hoped the Bible 



SOPHIA SMITH. 163 

would be studied in the Hebrew and Greek in her col- 
lege, so that the students could know for themselves the 
truth of the translations which we have to-day. 

Miss Smith gave about $400,000 for the founding of 
Smith College, — - the fortune left by her brother had 
increased, — with the express condition that not more 
than half the amount should be used in buildings and 
grounds. It required much urging to allow the college 
to bear her name. After counselling with friends, Miss 
Smith decided that the college should be built at North- 
ampton, which George Bancroft thought " the most 
beautiful town in New England, where no one can live 
without imbibing love for the place," with the provision 
that the town should raise $25,000, which was done. 
Northampton seemed preferable to Hatfield, because 
more easy of access, and possessed of a public library 
and other intellectual attractions. After her brother's 
money came into her hands, Miss Smith continued to 
economize for herself, but gave generously to others. 
Often in her journal she wrote, " I feel the responsi- 
bility of this great property." 

She subscribed $5,000 to the Massachusetts Agricul- 
tural College if it should be located at Northampton, 
$300 for a library for the young people's Literary Asso- 
ciation in Hatfield, $1,000 towards the organ in the 
church, $30,000 for the endowment of a professorship 
in Andover Theological Seminaiy, and to many other 
objects. " She gave to them all" says Dr. Greene, 
" Home Missions and Foreign Missions, the Bible So- 
ciety and Tract Society, the Seamen and Freedmen, — 
to all the objects presented. In her journal she writes : 
' I desire to give where duty calls.' . . . Before her 



164 SOPHIA SMITH. 

death she had great satisfaction and comfort in her 
Andover donation. . . . When she was considering 
whether or not to make her donation to Andover Theo- 
logical Seminary, Professor Park asked her if he might 
consult a mutual friend, an eminent lawyer and business 
man, about it. With uplifted hands and almost a re- 
buking gesture she replied, ' No, no ; I'll make up my 
mind myself.' One of her most intimate friends, a 
graduate of Mount Holyoke Seminary, remarked, < I 
never was acquainted with a person who felt more 
deeply than Miss Smith her accountability to God.' " 

Miss Smith's life declined pleasantly and happily. 
In 1866 she wrote in her journal : " Sunday afternoon. 
It is a most splendid day ; have been to church, although 
I have not heard. I feel the presence of Him who is 
everywhere, and who is all love to him that seeketh 
Him and serves Him. ... I resolve with His blessing 
to give myself unreservedly anew to Him, to watch over 
my thoughts and words, and to strive after a more per- 
fect life in all my dealings with my fellow-men, and 
strive to make this great affliction [deafness] a means of 
sanctification, and make it a means of improvement in 
the divine life." 

May 9, 1870, she made her last record in her journal : 
" I resolve to begin anew to strive to be better in every- 
thing; to guard against carelessness in talking; to strive 
for more patience and sense, and to strive for more 
earnestness, to do more good ; to strive against selfish- 
ness, and to cultivate good feelings in all ; to live to 
God's glory, that others, seeing our good works, may 
glorify our Father in heaven." 

Such golden words might well be cut on the walls of 



SOPHIA SMITH. 165 

Smith College, that the students might imitate the re- 
solve of the founder, who believed, as she said in her 
will, " that all education should be for the glory of God 
and the good of man. ... It is not my design to render 
my sex any the less feminine, but to develop as fully as 
may be the powers of womanhood, and furnish women 
with the means of usefulness, happiness, and honor, now 
withheld from them." 

One month after writing in her journal, June 12, 
1870, Sophia Smith passed to her reward, at the age 
of seventy-five. She was in her usual health till four 
days before her death, when she was prostrated by 
paralysis. She was buried in the Hatfield Cemetery 
under a simple monument of her own erecting. She 
had provided for a better and more enduring monument 
in Smith College, and she knew that no other was 
needed. The seventy-five-thousand-dollar academy at 
Hatfield would also keep her in blessed remembrance. 

The thought of Miss Smith, after her death, began 
to shape itself into brick and stone. Thirteen acres of 
ground were purchased for the site of the college, com- 
manding a view of the beautiful valley of the Connecti- 
cut River ; and the main building, of brick and freestone, 
was erected in secular Gothic style, the interior finished 
in un painted native woods. On the large stained-glass 
window over the entrance of the building is a copy of 
the college seal, a woman radiant" with light, with the 
motto underneath in Greek which expressed the desire 
of the founder : " Add to your virtue knowledge." 

The homestead which was on the estate when pur- 
chased was made over for a home for the students, as 
the plan of small dwellings to accommodate from twenty 



166 SOPHIA SMITH. 

to fifty young women had been decided upon in prefer- 
ence to several hundreds gathered under one roof. 

The right person for the right place had been chosen 
as president, the Bev. Dr. L. Clark Seelye, at that time 
a professor in Amherst College. He had made a care- 
ful inspection of the principal educational institutions 
both in this country and in Europe, and his plans as to 
buildings and courses of study were adopted. 

Smith College was dedicated July 14, 1875, and 
opened to students in the following September. Presi- 
dent Seelye in his admirable inaugural address said, 
" One hundred years ago a female college would have been 
simply an object of ridicule. . . . You have seen ma- 
chines invented to do the work which formerly absorbed 
the greater portion of woman's time and strength. Fac- 
tories have supplanted the spinning-wheel and distaff. 
Sewing-machines will stitch in an hour more than our 
grandmothers could in a day. I need not ask you what 
we are to do with force which has thus been set free. 
The answer comes clearly from an enlightened public 
opinion, saying, ' Put it to higher uses ; train it to 
think correctly ; to work intelligently ; to do its share 
in bringing the human mind to the perfection for 
which it was designed.' " 

Dr. Seelye emphasized the fact that this college was 
to give women " an education as high and thorough and 
complete as that which young men receive in Harvard, 
Yale, and Amherst." " I believe," he said, " this is the 
only female college that insists upon substantially the 
same requisites for admission which have been found 
practicable and essential in male colleges." He disap- 
proved of a preparatory department, and other colleges 



SOPHIA SMITH. 167 

for women have wisely followed the standard and exam- 
ple of Smith. Secondary schools have seen the neces- 
sity of a higher fitting for their students, that they may 
enter our best colleges. 

Greek and the higher mathematics were made an 
essential part of the course. To this, exception was 
taken ; and Dr. Seelye was frequently asked, " What 
use have young, women of Greek ? " He answered, "A 
study of Greek brings us into communion with the best 
scholarship and the acutest intellects of all European 
countries. ... It would simply justify its place in 
our college curriculum upon the relation which it has 
had, and ever must have, to the growth of the human 
intellect. 7 ' 

Dr. Seelye favored the teaching of music and art, but 
not to the exclusion of other things, unless one had spe- 
cial gifts along those lines. " Musical entertainments/' 
he said, " have generally been the grand parade-ground 
of female boarding-schools. All of us are familiar with 
the many wearisome hours which young ladies ordi- 
narily are required to spend at the piano, — time enough 
to master most of the sciences and languages ; and all 
of us are familiar with the remark, heard so frequently 
after school-days are over, ' I cannot play ; I am out of 
practice.' " 

President Seelye had to meet all sorts of objections 
to higher education for women. - When he told a friend 
that Greek was to be studied in Smith College, the 
friend replied, " Nonsense ! girls cannot bear such a 
strain ; " " and yet his own daughters," says Dr. Seelye, 
"were going, with no remonstrance from him, night 
after night, through the round of parties and fashion- 



168 SOPHIA SMITH. 

able amusements in a great city. We question whether 
any greater expenditure of physical force is necessary 
to master Greek than to endure ordinary fashionable 
amusements. Woman's health is endangered far more 
by balls and parties than by schools. For one ruined 
by over-study, we can point to a hundred ruined by 
dainties and dances." 

Another said to President Seelye, "Think of a wife 
who forced you to talk perpetually about metaphysics, 
or to listen to Greek and Latin quotations ! " This 
would be much more agreeable conversation to some 
men than to hear about dress and servants and gossip. 

When Smith College was opened in 1875, there were 
many applicants ; but with requirements for admission 
the same as at Harvard, Yale, Brown, and Amherst, 
only fifteen could pass the examinations. The next 
year eighteen were accepted. 

Each year the number has increased, till in the 
year 1895 there were 875 students at Smith College. 
The professorships are about equally divided between 
men and women. The chair of Greek, on the John 
M. Greene foundation, "is founded in honor of the 
Rev. John M. Greene, D.D., who first suggested to 
Miss Smith the idea of the college, and was her con- 
fidential adviser in her bequest," says the College 
Calendar. 

There are three courses of study, each extending 
through four years, — the classical course leading to the 
degree of Bachelor of Arts, the scientific to Bachelor of 
Science, the literary to Bachelor of Letters. The maxi- 
mum of work allowed to any student in a regular course 
is sixteen hours of recitation each week. 



SOPHIA SMITH. 169 

Year by year Miss Smith's noble gift has been supple- 
mented by the gifts of others. 

In 1878 the Lilly Hall of Science was dedicated, the 
gift of Mr. Alfred Theodore Lilly. This building con- 
tains lecture rooms, and laboratories for chemistry, 
physics, geology, zoology, and botany. In 1881 Mr. 
Winthrop Hillyer gave the money to erect the Hillyer 
Art Gallery, which now contains an extensive collec- 
tion of casts, engravings, and paintings, and is provided 
with studios. One corridor of engravings and an alcove 
of original drawings were given by the Century Com- 
pany. Mr. Hillyer gave an endowment of $50,000 for 
his gallery. A music-hall was also erected in 1881. 

The observatory, given by two donors unknown to 
the public, has an eleven-inch refracting telescope, a 
spectroscope, siderial clock, chronograph, a portable tele- 
scope, and a meridian circle, aperture four inches. 

The alumnae gymnasium contains a swimming-bath, 
and a large hall for gymnastic exercises and in-door 
sport. A large greenhouse has been erected to aid in 
botanical work, with an extensive collection of tropical 
plants. 

There are eight or more dwelling-houses for the stu- 
dents, each presided over by a competent woman, where 
the scholars find cheerful, happy homes. The Tenney 
House, bequeathed by Mrs. Mary A. Tenney, for experi- 
ments in co-operative housekeeping, enables the students 
to adapt their expenses to their means, if they choose 
to make the experiment together. Tuition is $100 a 
year, with $300 for board and furnished room in the 
college houses. 

Smith College is fortunately situated. Opposite the 



170 SOPHIA SMITH. 

grounds is the beautiful Forbes Library, with an en- 
dowment of $300,000 for books alone, and not far away 
a public library with several thousand volumes, and 
a permanent endowment of $50,000 for its increase. 
The students have access to the collections at Amherst 
College and the Massachusetts Agricultural College, 
also at Mount Holyoke College, about seven miles dis- 
tant. 

There are no secret societies at Smith. " Instead of 
hazing newcomers," says President Seelye, " the second 
or sophomore class will give them a reception in the 
art-gallery, introduce them to the older students with 
the courteous hospitality which good breeding dictates." 

There are several literary and charitable societies in 
Smith College. Great interest is taken in the working- 
girls of New York, and in the college settlement of 
that city. 

None of the evil effects predicted for young women 
in college have been realized. " Some of our best 
scholars," says President Seelye, "have steadily im- 
proved in health since entering college. Some who 
came so feeble that it was doubtful whether they could 
remain a term have become entirely well and strong. 
. . . We have had frequently professors from male in- 
stitutions to give instruction ; and their testimony is to 
the effect that the girls study better than the boys, and 
that the average scholarship is higher." 

" The general atmosphere of the college is one of 
freedom," writes Louise Walston, in the " History of 
Higher Education in Massachusetts," by George Gary 
Bush, Ph.D. " The written code consists of one law, — 
Lights out at ten ; the unwritten is that of every well- 



SOPHIA SMITH. Ill 

regulated community, and to the success of this method 
of discipline every year is a witness. 

" This freedom is not license. . . . The system of 
attendance upon recitation at Smith is in this respect 
unique. It is distinctively a ' no-cut ' system. In the 
college market that commodity known as indulgences is 
not to be found; and no student is expected to absent 
herself from lecture or recitation except for good rea- 
sons, the validity of which, however, is left to her own 
conscience. Knowledge is offered as a privilege, and is 
so received." 

As Miss Smith directed in her will, " the Holy Scrip- 
tures are daily and systematically read and studied 
in the college." A chapel service is held in the morn- 
ing of week-days, and a vesper service on Sunday. 
Students attend the churches of their preference in 
Northampton. 

All honor to Sophia Smith, the quiet Christian 
woman, who, forgetting herself, became a blessing to 
tens of thousands by her gifts. At the request of the 
trustees of Smith College, Dr. Greene is preparing a 
volume on her life and character. 

•All honor, too, to the Rev. John M. Greene, who for 
twenty-five years has been the beloved pastor of the 
Eliot Church in Lowell, Mass. His quarter century of 
service was fittingly celebrated at Lowell, Sept. 26, 
1895. Out of five hundred Congregational ministers 
in Massachusetts, only ten have held so long a pasto- 
rate as he over one church. 

Among the hundreds of congratulations and testi- 
monies to Dr. Greene's successful ministry, the able 
Professor Edwards A. Park of Andover, wrote to the 



172 SOPHIA SMITH. 

congregation : " The city of Lowell has been favored 
with clergymen who will be remembered by a distant 
posterity, but not one of them will be remembered 
longer than the present pastor of Eliot Church. He 
was the father of Smith College, now so nourishing in 
Northampton, Mass. Had it not been for him that 
great institution would never have existed. For this 
great benefaction to the world, he will be honored a 
hundred years hence." 



JAMES LICK 



AND HIS TELESCOPE. 



James Lick, one of the great givers of the West, was 
born in Fredericksburg, Penn., Aug. 25, 1796. Little 
is known of his early life, except that his ancestors 
were Germans, and that he was born in poverty. His 
grandfather served in the Revolutionary AVar. James 
learned to make organs and pianos in Hanover, Penn., 
and in 1819 worked for Joseph Hiskey, a prominent 
piano manufacturer of Baltimore. 

One day Conrad Meyer, a poor lad, came into the 
store and asked for work. Young Lick gave him food 
and clothing, and secured a place for him in the estab- 
lishment. They became fast friends, and continued 
thus for life. Later Conrad Meyer was a wealthy man- 
ufacturer of pianos in Philadelphia. 

James Lick in 1820, when he was twenty-four, went 
to New York, hoping to begin business for himself, but 
rinding his capital fcoo limited, in the following year, 
1821, went to Buenos Ayres, South America, where he 
lived for ten years. At the end of that time he went 
to Philadelphia, and met his old friend Conrad Meyer. 
He had brought with him for sale $40,000 worth of 
hides and nutria skins. The latter are obtained from a 
species of otter found along the La Plata River. 

173 



174 JAMES LICK. 

He intended settling in Philadelphia, and rented a 
house on Eighth Street, near Arch, but soon abandoned 
his purpose, probably because the business outlook was 
not hopeful, and returned to Buenos Ay res to sell 
pianos. From the east side of South America he went 
to the west side, and remained in Valparaiso, Chili, for 
four years. He spent eleven years in Peru, making and 
selling pianos. Once, when his workmen left him sud- 
denly to go to Mexico, rather than break a contract he 
did all the work himself, and accomplished it in two 
years. 

In 1847 he went to San Francisco, which had only 
one thousand inhabitants. He was then about fifty 
years old, and took with him over $30,000, which, fore- 
seeing California's wonderful prospects, he invested in 
land in San Francisco, and farther south in Santa Clara 
Valley. 

In 1854, to the surprise of everybody, the quiet, parsi- 
monious James Lick built a magnificent flour-mill six 
miles from San Jose. He tore down an old structure, 
and erected in its place a mill, finished within in solid 
mahogany highly polished, and furnished it with the 
best machinery possible. It was called " The Mahogany 
Mill," or more frequently " Lick's Folly." He made 
the grounds about the mill very attractive. " Upon it," 
says the San Jose Dally Mercury, June 28, 1888, " he 
began early to set out trees of various kinds, both for 
fruit and ornament. He held some curious theories of 
tree-planting, and believed in the efficiency of a bone 
deposit about the roots of every young tree. Many are 
the stories told by old residents of James Lick going 
along the highway in an old rattletrap, rope-tied wagon, 




JAMES LICK. 
(Used by courtesy of "The Overland Monthly.") 



JAMES LICK. 175 

with a bearskin robe for a seat cushion, and stopping 
every now and then to gather in the bones of some dead 
beast. People used to think him crazy until they saw 
him among his beloved trees, planting some new and 
rare variety, and carefully mingling about its young 
roots the finest of loams with the bones he had gathered 
during his lonely rides. 

" There is a story extant, and probably well-founded, 
which illustrates the odd means he employed to secure 
hired help at once trustworthy and obedient. One day 
while he was planting his orchard a man applied to him 
for work. Mr. Lick directed him to take the trees he 
indicated to a certain part of the grounds, and then to 
plant them with the tops in the earth and the roots in 
the air. The man obeyed the directions to the letter, 
and reported in the evening for further orders. Mr. 
Lick went out, viewed his work with apparent satisfac- 
tion, and then ordered him to plant the trees the proper 
way and thereafter to continue in his employ." Nine- 
teen years after Mr. Lick built his mill, Jan. 16, 1873, 
he surprised the people of San Jose again, by giving it 
to the Paine Memorial Society of Boston, half the pro- 
ceeds of sale to be used for a Memorial Hall, and half 
to sustain a lecture course. He had always been an 
admirer of Thomas Paine's writings. The mill was annu- 
ally inundated by the floods from the Guadalupe River, 
spoiling his orchards and his roads, so that he tired 
of the property. 

An agent of the Boston Society went to California, 
sold the mill for $18,000 cash, and carried the money 
back to Boston. Mr. Lick was displeased that the prop- 
erty which had cost him $ 200,000 should be sold at 



176 JAMES LICK. 

such a low price, and without his knowledge, as he 
would willingly have bought it in at $50,000. 

It is said by some that Mr. Lick built his mill as a 
protest against the cheap and flimsy style of building on 
the Pacific Coast, but it is much more probable that he 
built it for another reason. In early life it is believed 
that young Lick fell in love with the daughter of a well- 
to-do miller for whom he worked. When the young 
man made known his love, which was reciprocated by 
the girl, the miller was angry, and is said to have re- 
plied, " Out, you beggar ! Dare you cast your eyes upon 
my daughter, who will inherit my riches ? Have you 
a mill like this ? Have ' you a single penny in your 
purse ? " 

To this Lick replied " that he had nothing as yet, 
but one day he would have a mill beside which this one 
would be a pigsty." 

Lick caused his elegant mill to be photographed with- 
out and within, and sent the pictures to the miller. It 
was, however, too late to win the girl, if indeed he ever 
hoped to do so ; for she had long since married, and Mr. 
Lick went through life a lonely and unresponsive man. 
He never lived in his palatial mill, but occupied for a 
time a humble abode near by. 

After Mr. Lick disposed of his mill, he began to im- 
prove a tract of land south of San Jose known as " The 
Lick Homestead Addition." " Day after day," says the 
San Jose Mercury, " long trains of carts and wagons 
passed slowly through San Jose carrying tall trees and 
full-grown shrubbery from the old to the new location. 
Winter and summer alike the work went on, the old 
man superintending it all in his rattletrap wagon and 



JAMES LICK. 177 

bearskin robe. His plans for tins new improvement 
were made regardless of expense. Tradition tells that 
he had imported from Australia rare trees, and in order 
to secure their growth had brought with them whole 
shiploads of their native earth. He conceived the idea 
of building conservatories superior to any on the Pacific 
Coast, and for that purpose had imported from England 
the materials for two large conservatories after the model 
of those in the Kew Gardens in London. His death 
occurred before he could have these constructed; and 
they remained on the hands of the trustees until a 
body of San Francisco gentlemen contributed funds for 
their purchase and donation to the use of the public in 
Golden Gate Park, where they now stand as the wonder 
and delight of all who visit that beautiful resort." 

Mr. Lick also built in San Francisco a handsome 
hotel called the Lick House. With his own hands he 
carved some of the rosewood frames of the mirrors. 
He caused the walls to be decorated with pictures of 
California scenery. The dining-room has a polished 
floor made of many thousand pieces of wood of various 
kinds. 

When Mr. Lick was seventy-seven years old, and 
found himself the owner of millions, with a laudable 
desire to be remembered after death, and a patriotism 
worthy of high commendation, he began to think deeply 
how best to use his property. 

On Feb. 15, 1873, Mr. Lick offered to the California 
Academy of Sciences a piece of land on Market Street, 
the site of its present building. Professor George Da- 
vidson, then president of the academy, called to thank 
him, when Mr. Lick unfolded to him his purpose of 



178 JAMES LICK. 

giving a great telescope for future investigation of the 
heavenly bodies. He had become deeply interested 
from reading, it is said, about possible life on other 
planets. It is supposed by some that while Mr. Lick 
lived his lonely life in Peru, a priest, who gained his 
friendship, interested him in astronomy. Others think 
his mind was drawn towards it by reading about the 
Washington Observatory, completed in 1874, and noticed 
widely by the press. 

Mr. Lick was not a scientist nor an astronomer ; he 
had been too absorbed in successful business life for 
that ; but he earned money that others might have the 
time and opportunity to devote their lives to science. 

Mr. Lick appears to have had a passion for statuary, 
as shown by his gifts. At one time he thought of 
having expensive memorial statues of himself and fam 
ily erected on the heights overlooking the ocean and 
the bay, but was dissuaded by one of his pioneer 
friends, according to Miss M. W. Shinn's account in 
the Overland Monthly, November, 1892. 

" Mr. D. J. Staples felt it his duty to tell Mr. Lick 
frankly that his bequests for statues of himself and 
family would be utterly useless as a memorial ; that 
the world would not be interested in them ; and when 
Mr. Lick urged that such costly statues would be pre- 
served for all time, as the statues of antiquity now 
remained the precious relics of a lost civilization, an- 
swered, almost at random, ' More likely we shall get 
into a war with Russia or somebody, and they will 
come around here with warships, and smash the statues 
to pieces in bombarding the city.' " 

Mr. Lick conferred with his friends, but had his own 



JAMES LICK. 179 

decided wishes and plans which usually he carried out. 
On July 16, 1874, he conveyed all his property, real 
and personal, over $3,000,000, by deed of trust to seven 
men ; but becoming dissatisfied with some members of 
the Board of Lick Trustees, he made a new deed, Sept. 
21, 1875, under which his property has been used as he 
directed. A year later he changed some of the mem- 
bers, but the deed itself remained as before. 

One of the first bequests under his deed of trust was 
for the telescope and observatory, $700,000. Another, 
to the Protestant Orphan Asylum of San Francisco, 
$25,000. 

For an Orphan Asylum in San Jose, "free to all 
orphans without regard to creed or religion of parents," 
$25,000. 

To the Ladies' Protective and Relief Society of San 
Francisco, $25,000. 

To the Mechanics' Institute of San Francisco, " to be 
applied to the purchase of scientific and mechanical 
works for such Institute," $10,000. 

To the Trustees of the Society for Prevention of 
Cruelty to Animals, of San Francisco, $10,000, with 
the hope expressed by him, " that the trustees of said 
society may organize such a system as will result in 
establishing similar societies in every city and town 
in California, to the end that the rising generations 
may not witness or be impressed with such scenes 
of cruelty and brutality as constantly occur in this 
State." 

To found in San Francisco " an institution to be 
called The Old Ladies' Home," $100,000. For the 
erection and the maintenance of that extremely useful 



180 JAMES LICK. 

public charity, Free Public Baths, $150,000. These 
baths went into use Nov. 1, 1890. 

For the erection of a monument to be placed in 
Golden Gate Park, "to the memory of Francis Scott 
Key, the author of 'The Star-Spangled Banner,'" $60,- 
000. This statue was unveiled July 4, 1888. 

To endow an institution to be called the California 
School of Mechanical Arts, " to be open to all youths 
born in California," $540,000. 

For statuary emblematical of three important epochs 
in the history of California, to be placed in front of the 
San Francisco City Hall, $100,000. 

To John H. Lick, his son, born in Pennsylvania, 
June 30, 1818, $150,000. The latter contested the 
will; and a compromise was effected whereby he re- 
ceived $533,000, the expense of the suit being a little 
over $60,000. This son, at his death, founded Lick 
College, Fredericksburg, Penn., giving it practically all 
his fortune. It is now called Schuylkill Seminary, and 
had 285 pupils in 1893, according to the Report of the 
Commissioner of Education. A family monument was 
erected at Fredericksburg, Penn., Mr. Lick's birthplace, 
at a cost of $20,000. 

Mr. Lick set aside some personal property for his 
own economical use during his life. After all these 
bequests had been attended to, the remainder of his 
fortune was to be given in " equal proportions to the 
California Academy of Sciences and the Society of Cali- 
fornia Pioneers," to be expended in erecting buildings 
for them, and in the purchase of a " suitable library, 
natural specimens, chemical and philosophical apparatus, 
rare and curious things useful in the advancement of 



JAMES LICK. 181 

science, and generally in the carrying out of the objects 
and purposes for which said societies were respectively 
established." Each society has received about $800,- 
000 from the Lick estate. These were very remark- 
able gifts from a man who had been a mechanic, 
brought up in narrow circumstances, and with limited 
education. 

The California School of Mechanical Arts was opened 
in January, 1895, and now, in the spring of 1896, has 
230 pupils. The substantial brick buildings are in 
Spanish architecture, and cost, with, machinery and fur- 
niture, about $115,000, leaving $425,000 for endow- 
ment. The Academic Building is three stories high, 
and the shops one and two stories. The requirements 
for pupils in entering the school are substantially the 
same as for the last of the grammar grades of the public 
schools. There is no charge for tuition. 

Mr. Lick in making this bequest stated its object : "To 
educate males and females in the practical arts of life, 
such as working in wood, iron, and stone, or any of the 
metals, and in whatever industry intelligent mechanical 
skill now is or can hereafter be applied." 

In view of this desire on the part of the giver, a care- 
ful survey of industrial education was made ; and it was 
decided to " give each student a thorough knowledge of 
the technique of some one industrial pursuit, from which 
he may earn a living." 

The school course is four years. At the beginning 
of the third year the student must choose his field of 
work for the last year and a half, and give his time to 
it. Besides the ordinary branches, carpentry, forging, 
moulding, machine and architectural drawing, wood. 



182 JAMES LICK. 

carving, dressmaking, millinery, cookery, etc., are 
taught. It is expected that graduates will be able to 
earn good wages at once after leaving the school, and 
the teachers endeavor to rind suitable situations for 
their pupils. 

Miss Caroline Willard Baldwin, at the head of the 
science department, who is herself a Bachelor of Sci- 
ence from the University of California, and a Doctor 
of Science from Cornell University, writes me : " The 
grade of work is much the same as that given in the 
Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and the entire equipment 
of the school is excellent." 

The Lick Bronze Statuary at the City Hall in San 
Francisco was unveiled on Thanksgiving Day, Thurs- 
day, Nov. 29, 1894. Mr. Lick had specified in his deed 
of trust that it should "represent by appropriate de- 
signs and figures the history of California ; first, from 
the early settlement of the Missions to the acquisition 
of California by the United States ; second, from such 
acquisition by the United States to the time when agri- 
culture became the leading interest of the State ; third, 
from the last-named period to the first day of January, 
1874." He knew that there is no more effective way 
to teach history and inculcate love of city and nation 
than by object-lessons. A great gift is a continual sug- 
gestion to others to give also. The statue of a noble 
man or woman is a constant educator and inspirer to 
good deeds. 

The Lick Statuary is of granite, surmounted by bronze 
figures of heroic proportions. The main column is forty- 
six feet high, with a bronze figure twelve feet high, 
weighing 7,000 pounds, on the top, representing Eureka, 



JAMES LICK. 183 

a woman typical of California, with, a grizzly bear by 
her side. Beneath are four panels, depicting a family 
of immigrants crossing the Sierras, a vaquero lassoing 
a steer, traders with the Indians, and California under 
American rule. 

Below these panels are the heads in bronze of James 
Lick, Father Junipero Serra, Sir Francis Drake, and 
John C. Fremont ; and below these, the names of men 
famous in the history of California, — James W. Mar- 
shall, the discoverer of gold at Sutter's mill, and others. 
There are granite wings to the main pedestal, the bronze 
figures of which represent early times, — a native Indian 
over whom bends a Catholic priest, and a Spaniard 
throwing his lasso ; a group of miners in '49, and figures 
denoting commerce and agriculture. The artist was 
Mr. Frank Happersberger, a native of California. Mem- 
bers of the California Pioneers made eloquent addresses 
at the unveiling of the beautiful statue, the band played 
"The Star-Spangled Banner," and the children of the 
public schools sang "America." 

" The benefactions of James Lick were not of a pos- 
thumous character," said the Hon. Willard B. Farwell 
in his address. " There was no indication of a desire 
to accumulate for the sake of accumulation alone, and to 
cling with greedy purpose and tenacity to the last dollar 
gained, until the heart had ceased its pulsations, and the 
last breath had been drawn, before yielding it up for 
the good of others. On the contrary, he provided for the 
distribution of his wealth while living. . . . There was 
no room for cavil then over the manner of his giving. 
He fulfilled in its broadest measure the injunction of 
the aphorism, ' He gives Avell who gives quickly.' " 



184 JAMES LICK. 

The gift nearest to Mr. Lick's heart was his great 
telescope, to be, as he said in his deed ef trust, " superior 
to and more powerful than any telescope yet made, with 
all the machinery appertaining thereto, and appropriately 
connected therewith." 

This telescope with its building was to be conveyed 
to the University of California, and to be known as the 
"Lick Astronomical Department # of the University of 
California." 

Various sites were suggested for the great telescope. 
A gentleman relates the following story : " One of the 
sites suggested was a mountain north of San Francisco. 
Mr. Lick was ill, but determined upon visiting this 
mountain ; so he was taken on a cot to the station ; and 
on arriving at the town nearest the mountain, the cot 
was removed to a wagon, and they started towards the 
summit. By some accident the rear of the wagon gave 
way, and the cot containing the old gentleman slid out 
on the mountain-side. This so angered him that he said 
he would never place the telescope on a mountain that 
treated him in that way, and ordered the party to turn 
back towards San Francisco." 

During the summer of 1875 Mr. Lick sent Mr. Fraser, 
his trusted agent, to report on Mount St. Helena, Monte 
Diablo, Mount Hamilton, and others. In many respects 
the latter, in sight of his old mill at San Jose, seemed 
the best situated of all the mountain peaks. " Yet the 
possibility that a complete astronomical establishment 
might one day be planted on its summit seemed more 
like a fairy-tale than like sober fact," says Professor 
Edward S. Holden, Director of the Lick Observatory. 
" It was at that time a wilderness. A few cattle-ranches 



JAMES LICK. 185 

occupied the valleys around it. Its slopes were covered 
with chaparral or thickets of scrub oak. Not even a 
trail led over it. The nearest house was eleven miles 
away." It was and is the home of many rattlesnakes. 
They live upon squirrels, and small birds and their eggs, 
and come up to the top of the mountain in quest of 
water. 

Sir Edwin Arnold, who visited Mount Hamilton, tells 
this incident of the " road-runner/' the bird sometimes 
called " chaparral cock," as it was told to him. " The 
rattlesnake is the deadly enemy of its species, always 
hunting about in the thickets for eggs and young birds, 
since the ' road-runner ? builds its nest on the ground. 
When, therefore, the '. chaparral cocks' find a ' rattler ' 
basking in the sun, they gather, I was assured, leaves 
of the prickly cactus, and lay them in a circle all around 
the serpent, which cannot draw its belly over the sharp 
needles of these leaves. Thus imprisoned, the reptile is 
set upon by the birds, and pecked or spurred to death." 

Mount Hamilton, fifty miles southeast of San Fran- 
cisco, is near San Jose, twenty-six miles eastward, and 
thus easy of access, save the difficulty of reaching its 
summit, 4,300 feet above the sea. This was overcome 
by the willingness of Santa Clara County to construct a 
road to its top ; which road was completed in December, 
1876, at a cost of about $78,000. The road rises 4,000 
feet in twenty-two miles ; and the grade nowhere exceeds 
six and one-half feet in one hundred, or 343 feet to the 
mile. Towards the top it winds round and round the 
flanks of the mountain itself. 

The view from the top of the mountain is most inspir- 
ing. « The lovely valley of Santa Clara and the Santa 



186 JAMES LICK. 

Cruz mountains to the west, a bit of the Pacific and the 
Bay of Monterey to the southwest, the Sierra Nevada 
(13,000-14,000 feet) with countless ranges between to 
the southeast, the San Joaquin valley with the Sierras 
beyond to the east, while to the north lie many lower 
ranges of hills, and on the horizon Mount Shasta, or 
Lassens' Butte (14,400 feet), 175 miles away. The Bay 
of San Francisco lies flat before you, and beyond it is 
Mount Tamalpais at the entrance to the Golden Gate." 

" One of the gorges in the vicinity of Mount Hamil- 
ton," writes Taliesin Evans in the May, 1886, Century, 
" is reputed to have been a favorite retreat of Joaquin 
Murietta, the famous bandit, whose name was a terror 
to the early settlers of the State. A spring, situated a 
mile and a half east of Observatory Peak, at which he 
is said to have drawn water, now bears the name of 
1 Joaquin's Spring.' " 

On June 7, 1876, Congress gave the land for the site, 
1,350 acres ; and other land was given and purchased, 
till the Observatory now has 2,581 acres. It was neces- 
sary to remove 72,000 tons of solid rock from the moun- 
tain summit, which was lowered as much as thirty-two 
feet in places, that the buildings might have a level 
foundation. Clay for making the brick was found about 
two and one-half miles below the Observatory (by the 
road), thus saving over $46,000 in the 2,600,000 bricks 
used. Springs also were fortunately discovered about 
340 feet below the present level of the summit. 

In 1879, after the site had been decided upon, Pro- 
fessor S. W. Burnham of Chicago was asked by the 
Lick trustees to test it for astronomical purposes. He 
took his telescope, and remained there during August, 



JAMES LICK. 187 

September, and October. Out of sixty nights he found 
forty-two were of the very highest class for making 
observations, while eleven were foggy or cloudy. He 
discovered forty-two new double stars while on the top 
of the mountain. 

Professor Burnham said in his Report, " The remark- 
able steadiness of the air, and the continued succession 
of nights of almost perfect definition, are conditions not 
to be hoped for in any place with which I am acquainted, 
and judging from the previous reports of the various 
observatories, are not to be met *with elsewhere." 

Meantime, even before Congress gave the land in 1876, 
Mr. D. 0. Mills, one of the first trustees, had visited 
Professor Holden and Professor Newcomb at Washing- 
ton to determine about the general plans for the Obser- 
vatory. It was agreed that the latter should go to 
Europe to investigate the matter of procuring the glass 
necessary for a large reflector or refractor. It was 
finally decided that a refracting telescope was the best 
for the study of double stars and nebulae, the moon's 
surface, etc., giving more distinctness and brilliancy, 
and being less subject to atmospheric disturbance. 

Professor Newcomb experienced much difficulty in 
Europe in finding a firm ready to undertake to make a 
glass for a telescope larger and more powerful than any 
yet made. The firm of M. Feil & Sons, Paris, was 
finally chosen. Professor Newcomb wrote an interest- 
ing report of the process of making the glass. 

" The materials," he said, " are mixed and melted in 
a clay pot holding from five hundred pounds to a ton, 
and are constantly stirred with an iron rod until the 
proper combination is obtained. The heat is then 



188 JAMES LICK. 

slowly diminished until the glass becomes too stiff to 
be stirred longer. Then the mass, pot and all, is placed 
in the annealing furnace. Here it must remain undis- 
turbed for a period of a month or more, when it is taken 
out ; the pot and the outside parts of the glass are 
broken away to rind whether a lump suitable for the 
required disk can be found in the interior. 

" If the interior were perfectly solid and homogeneous, 
there would be no further difficulty ; the lump would be 
softened by heat, pressed into a flat disk, and reannealed, 
when the work would be complete. But in practice, the 
interior is always found to be crossed in every direction 
by veins of unequal density, which will injure the per- 
formance of the glass ; and the great mechanical diffi- 
culty in the production of the disk is to cut these veins 
out and still leave a mass which can be pressed into a 
disk without any folding of the original surface." 

The glass for a telescope is usually composed of a 
double convex lens of crown glass, and a plano-concave 
lens of flint glass. M. Feil & Sons made and shipped 
the latter, which weighed three hundred and seventy- 
five pounds, but broke the crown glass in packing it. 
Then during three years they made twenty unsuccessful 
trials before obtaining a perfect glass. 

The cutting away of the clay pot and outside glass is 
a tedious process, requiring weeks and even months. 
No ordinary tools can be used. The pieces are " sawed 
by a wire working in sand and water. . . . When it is 
done," says Professor Newcomb, " the mass must be 
pressed into the shape of a disk, like a very thin grind- 
stone, and in order to do this the lump must first be 
heated to the melting-point, so as to become plastic. 



JAMES LICK. 189 

But when Feil began to heat this large mass it flew to 
pieces." He took more and more time for heating, and 
finally succeeded. 

The noted firm of Alvan Clark & Sons of Cambridge, 
Mass., did the polishing and shaping of the lenses, a 
labor requiring great skill and delicacy of workmanship. 
The objective glass was ordered in 1880, and reached 
Mount Hamilton late in 1886, having cost $51,000. It 
weighs with its cell 638 pounds. The Clarks would not 
undertake any larger objective than thirty-six inches. 
This was six inches larger than the great glass which 
they had made for the Imperial Observatory at Pulkowa, 
near St. Petersburg in Eussia. 

The glass, though an important part of the telescope, 
was only one of many things to be obtained. In 1876 
Captain Richard S. Floyd, president of the Lick trus- 
tees, himself a graduate of the United States Naval 
Academy, met Professor Holden in London; and the 
latter became the planner and adviser, throughout the 
construction of the buildings and the telescope. Captain 
Floyd visited many observatories, and carried on a vast 
correspondence, amounting to several thousand letters, 
with astronomers and opticians all over the world. 

Professor Holden was a graduate of West Point, had 
been a professor of mathematics in the navy, one of the 
astronomers at the Washington Observatory, in charge 
of several eclipse expeditions sent out by the govern- 
ment for observation, a member of various scientific 
societies in Europe as well as America, and associate 
member of the Royal Astronomical Society of England, 
and well-fitted for the position he was afterwards called 
to fill, — the directorship of the Lick Observatory. For 



190 JAMES LICK. 

some time lie was also president of the University of 
California. 

Between the years 1880 and 1888 the large astronom- 
ical buildings were erected on the top of Mount Hamil- 
ton. The main building of red brick consists of two 
domes, one twenty-five feet and six inches in diameter ; 
the other seventy-six feet in diameter, connected by a 
hall over one hundred and ninety-one feet long. This 
hall is paved and wainscoted with marble. The rooms 
for work and study open towards the east into this hall. 
The library, a handsome room with white polished ash 
cases and tables, also opens into it. Near the main 
entrance is the visitors' room, where the visitors register 
their names, among them many noted scientists from 
various parts of the world. J. H. Eickel in the Chau- 
tauqucm, June, 1893, says, " In this room stands the 
workbench which . Mr. Lick used in his trade, that of 
piano-making, while in Peru. Though not an elaborate 
affair, nothing attracts the attention of visitors more 
than this article of furniture." 

The large rotating dome at the south end of the build- 
ing, made by the Union Iron Works of San Francisco, is 
covered with sheet steel, and the movable parts weigh 
about eighty-nine tons. It is easily handled by means 
of a small engine in the basement. The small dome 
weighs about eight tons. 

Near the main building are the meridian circle house, 
with its instrument for measuring the declination of 
stars, the transit house, the astronomers' dwellings, the 
shops, etc. 

In the smaller dome is a twelve-inch equatorial tele- 
scope made by Alvan Clark & Sons, mounted at the Lick 



JAMES LICK. 191 

Observatory in October, 1881. There are also at Mount 
Hamilton, a six-and-one-half-inch equatorial telescope, 
a six-and-one-half-inch meridian circle, a four-inch tran- 
sit and zenith telescope, a four-inch comet-seeker, a 
five-inch horizontal photoheliograph, the Crocker photo- 
graphic telescope, and numerous clocks, spectroscopes, 
chronographs, meteorological instruments, and seismom- 
eters for measuring the time and intensity of earth- 
quake shocks. 

The buildings and instruments at Mount Hamilton 
are imbedded in the solid rock, so as not to be affected 
by the high winds on the top of the mountain. 

In the Century for March, 1894, Professor Holden 
gives an interesting account of earthquakes, and the 
instruments for measuring them at the Lick Obser- 
vatory. In the Charleston earthquake of 1886, it is 
computed that 774,000 square miles trembled, besides a 
vast ocean area. The effects of the shock were noted 
from Florida to Vermont, and from the Carolinas to On- 
tario, Iowa, and Arkansas. 

The science of the measurement of earthquakes had 
its birth in Tokio, Japan, in which country there are, 
on an average, two earthquake shocks daily. " Every 
part of the upper crust of the earth is in a state of con- 
stant change," says Professor Holden. " These changes 
were first discovered by their effects on the position 
of astronomical instruments. . . . The earthquake of 
Iquique, a seaport town of South America, in 1877, was 
shown at the Imperial Observatory near St. Petersburg, 
an hour and fourteen minutes later, by its effects on the 
delicate levels of an astronomical instrument. I myself 
have watched the changes in a hill (100 feet above a 



192 JAMES LICK. 

frozen lake which was 700 feet distant) as the ice bent 
and buckled, and changed the pressure on the adjacent 
shore. The level would faithfully indicate every move- 
ment. . . . 

" In Italy and in Japan microphones deeply buried in 
the earth make the earth tremors audible in the observa- 
tory telephones. During the years 1808-1888 there 
were 417 shocks recorded in San Francisco. The sever- 
est earthquake felt within the city of San Francisco 
was that of 1868. This shock threw down chimneys, 
broke glass along miles of streets, and put a whole pop- 
ulation in terror." The Lick Observatory has a complete 
set of Professor Swing's instruments for earthquake 
measurements. 

Accurate time signals are sent from the Observatory 
every day at noon, and are received at every railway 
station between San Francisco and Ogden, and many 
other cities. The instrumental equipment of the Obser- 
vatory is declared to be unrivalled. 

Interest centres most of all in the great telescope 
under the rotating dome, for which the 36-inch objective 
was made with so much difficulty. Tl^e great steel tube, 
a little over 56 feet long, holding the lens, and weighing 
with all its attachments four and one-half tons, the iron 
pier 38 feet high, the elaborate yet delicate machinery, 
were all made by Warner & Swasey of Cleveland, Ohio, 
whose skill has brought them well-deserved fame. The 
entire weight of the instrument is 40 tons. Its magni- 
fying power ranges from 180 to 3,000 diameters. 

On June 1, 1888, the Observatory, with its instruments, 
was transferred by the Lick trustees to the University 
of California. The whole cost was $610,000, leaving 



JAMES LICK. 193 

$90,000 for endowment out of the $700,000 given by 
Mr. Lick. 

Fourteen years had passed since Mr. Lick made his 
deed of trust. He lived long enough to see the site 
chosen and the plans made for the telescope, but died 
at the Lick House, Oct. 1, 1876, aged eighty. The 
body lay in state in Pioneer Hall, and on Oct. 4 was 
buried in Lone Mountain Cemetery, having been fol- 
lowed to the grave by a long procession of State and 
city officials, faculty and students of the University, and 
members of the various societies to which Mr. Lick had 
given so generously. 

He had expressed a desire to be buried on Mount 
Hamilton, either within or near the Observatory. There- 
fore a tomb was made in the base of the pier of the 
great 36-inch telescope ; " such a tomb," says Professor 
Holden, " as no Old World emperor could have com- 
manded or imagined." 

On Sunday, Jan. 9, 1887, the body of James Lick 
having been removed from the cemetery, the casket was 
enclosed in a lead-lined white maple coffin, and laid in 
the new tomb with appropriate ceremonies, witnessed 
by a large gathering of people. A memorial document 
stating that "this refracting telescope is the largest 
which has ever been constructed, and the astronomers 
who have used it declare that its performance surpasses 
that of all other telescopes/' was engrossed on parch- 
ment in India ink, and signed by the officials. It was 
then placed between two finely tanned skins, backed by 
black silk, and soldered in a leaden box eighteen inches 
in length, the same in width, and one inch in thickness. 
This was placed upon the iron coffin, and the outer cas- 



104 JAMES LICK. 

ket was soldered up air-tight. After the vault had been 
built up to the level of the foundation stone, a great 
stone weighing two and one-half tons was let down 
slowly upon the brick-work, beneath which was the cas- 
ket. Three other stones were placed in position, and 
then one section was laid of the iron pier, which weighs 
25 tons. 

Sir Edwin Arnold, who in 1892 went to see the great 
telescope, and " by a personal pilgrimage to do homage 
to the memory of James Lick," writes : " With my hand 
upon the colossal tube, slightly managing it as if it 
were an opera-glass, and my gaze wandering around the 
splendidly equipped interior, full of all needful astro- 
nomical resources, and built to stand a thousand storms, 
I think with admiration of its dead founder, and ask to 
see his tomb. It is placed immediately beneath the big 
telescope, which ascends and descends directly over the 
sarcophagus wherein repose the mortal relics of this 
remarkable man, — a marble chest, bearing the inscrip- 
tion, 'Here lies the body of James Lick.' 

" Truly James Lick sleeps gloriously under the bases 
of his big glass ! Four thousand feet nearer heaven 
than any of his dead fellow-citizens, he is buried more 
grandly than any king or queen, and has a finer monu- 
ment than the pyramids furnished to Cheops and Ce- 
phrenes." 

Mr. Lick wished both to help the world and to be 
remembered, and his wish has been gratified. 

From 1888 to 1893 the Lick telescope, with its 36- 
inch object-glass, was the largest refracting telescope 
in the world. The Yerkes telescope, with its 40-inch 
object-glass, is now the largest in the world. It is on 



JAMES LICK. 195 

the shore of Lake Geneva, Wis., seventy-five miles from 
Chicago, and belongs to the Chicago University. It 
will be remembered by those who visited the World's 
Fair at Chicago, and saw it in the Manufactures and 
Liberal Arts Building. Professor George E. Hale is 
the director of this great observatory. The glass was 
furnished by Mantois of Paris, from which the lenses 
were made by Alvan G. Clark, the sole survivor of the 
famous firm of Alvan Clark & Sons. The crown-glass 
double convex lens weighs 200 pounds; the plano-con- 
cave lens of flint glass, nearest the eye end of the 
telescope, weighs over 300 pounds. 

The telescope and dome were made by Warner & 
Swasey, who made also the 26-inch telescope at Wash- 
ington, the 18-inch at the University of Pennsylvania, 
the 10^-inch at the University of Minnesota, the 12-inch 
at Columbus, Ohio, and others. Of this firm Professor 
C. A. Young, in the Nortlt American Review for Febru- 
ary, 1896, says, "It is not too much to say that in design 
and workmanship their instruments do not suffer in 
comparison with the best foreign make, while in ' handi- 
ness ' they are distinctly superior. There is no longer 
any necessity for us to go abroad for astronomical in- 
struments, which are fully up to the highest standards." 

The steel tube of the Yerkes telescope is 64 feet long, 
and the 90-foot rotating dome, also of steel, weighs 
nearly 150 tons. The observatory, of gray Roman brick 
with gray terra-cotta and stone trimmings, is in the 
form of a Roman cross, with three domes, the largest 
dome at the western end covering the great telescope. 
Of the two smaller domes, one will contain a 12-inch 
telescope, and the other a 16-inch. Professor Young 



196 JAMES LICK. 

says of the Yerkes telescope, " It gathers three times 
as much light as the 23-inch instrument at Princeton ; 
two and three-eighths as much as the 26-inch telescopes 
of Washington and Charlottesville ; one and four-fifths 
as much as the 30-inch at Pulkowa; and 23 per cent 
more than the gigantic, and hitherto unrivalled, 36-inch 
telescope of the Lick Observatory. Possibly in this one 
quality of ' light/ the six-foot reflector of Lord Eosse, 
and the later five-foot reflector of Mr. Common, might 
compete with or even surpass it ; but as an instrument 
for seeing things, it is doubtful whether either of them 
could hold its own with even the smallest of the instru- 
ments named above, because of the reflector's inherent 
inferiority in distinctness of definition." 

Professor Young thinks the Yerkes telescope can 
hardly hope for the exceptional excellence of the " see- 
ing" at Mount Hamilton, Nice, or Ariquipa, at least at 
night. The magnifying power of the Yerkes telescope 
is so great, being from 200 to 4,000, that the moon can 
be brought optically within sixty miles of the observer's 
eye. "Any lunar object five or six hundred feet square 
would be distinctly visible, — a building, for instance, 
as large as the Capitol at Washington." 

Since the death of Mr. Lick others have added to his 
generous gifts for the purchase of special instruments, 
for sending expeditions to foreign countries to observe 
total solar eclipses, and the like. Mrs. Phoebe Hearst 
has given the fund which will yield $2,000 or more 
each year for Hearst Fellowships in astronomy or other 
special work. Colonel C. F. Crocker has given a photo- 
graphic telescope and dome, and provided a sum suffi- 
cient to pay the expenses of an eclipse expedition to be 



JAMES LICK. 197 

sent from Mount Hamilton to Japan, m August, 1896, 
under charge of Professor Schgeberle. 

Mr. Edward Crossley, a wealthy member of Parlia- 
ment for Halifax, England, has given a reflector and 
forty-foot dome, which reached Mount Hamilton from 
Liverpool in the latter part of 1895. 

Mr. Lick's gift of the telescope has stimulated a love 
for astronomical study and research, not only in Cal- 
ifornia, but throughout the world. The Astronomical 
Society of the Pacific was founded Eeb. 7, 1889 ; and 
any man or woman with genuine interest in the science 
was invited to join. It has a membership of over five 
hundred, and its publications are valuable. The society 
holds its summer meetings on Mount Hamilton. Very 
wisely, for the sake of diffusing knowledge, visitors are 
made welcome to Mount Hamilton every Saturday even- 
ing between the hours of seven and ten o'clock, to look 
through the big telescope and through the smaller ones 
when not in use. In five years, from June 1, 1889, to 
June 1, 1894, there were 33,715 visitors. Each person 
is shown the most interesting celestial objects, and the 
whole force of the Observatory is on duty, and spares 
no pains to make the visits both interesting and profit- 
able. 

James Lick planned wisely when he thought of his 
great telescope, even if he had no other wish than to be 
remembered and honored. Undoubtedly he did have 
other motives ; for Professor Hold-en says, " A very ex- 
tensive course of reading had given him the generous 
idea that the future well-being of the race was the 
object for a good man to strive to forward. Towards 
the end of his life, at least, the utter futility of his 



198 JAMES LICK. 

money to give any inner satisfaction oppressed liim 
more and more." 

The results of scientific work of the Lick Observatory 
have been most interesting and remarkable. Professor 
Edward E. Barnard discovered, Sept. 9, 1892, the fifth 
satellite of Jupiter, one hundred miles in diameter. He 
discovered nineteen comets in ten years, and has been 
called the " comet-seeker." He has also, says Professor 
Holden, made a very large number of observations 
'•upon the physical appearance of the planets Venus, 
Jupiter, and Saturn ; upon the zodiacal light, etc. ; upon 
meteors, lunar eclipses, double stars, occupations of 
stars, etc. ; and he has discovered a considerable number 
of new nebulae also." Professor Barnard resigned Oct. 
1, 1895, to accept the position of professor of astronomy 
in the University of Chicago, and is succeeded by Pro- 
fessor Wm. J. Hussey of the Leland Stanford Junior 
University. 

Sir Edwin Arnold, during his visit to the Obser- 
vatory, at the suggestion of Professor Campbell, looked 
through the great telescope upon the nebula in Orion. 
" I saw," he writes, " in the well-known region of ' Beta 
Orionis,' the vast separate system of that universe clearly 
outlined, — a fleecy, irregular, mysterious, windy shape, 
its edges whirled and curled like those of a storm-cloud, 
with stars and star clusters standing forth against the 
milky white background of the nebula like diamonds 
lying upon silver cloth. The central star, which to the 
naked eye or to a telescope of lower power looks single 
and of no great brilliancy, resolved itself, under the 
potent command of the Lick glass, into a splendid tra- 
pezium of four glittering worlds, arranged very much 
like those of the Southern Cross. 



JAMES LICK. 199 

"At the lower right-hand border of the beautiful 
cosmic mist, there opens a black abyss of darkness, 
which has the appearance of an inky cloud about to 
swallow up the silvery filigree of the nebula; but this 
the great glass fills up with unsuspecting worlds when 
the photographic apparatus is fitted to it. I understood 
Professor Holden's views to be that we were beholding, 
in that almost immeasurably remote silvery haze, an en- 
tirely separated system of worlds and clusters, apart 
from all others, as our own system is, but inconceivably 
grander, larger, and more populous with suns and planets 
and their starry allies." 

Professor John M. Schaeberle, formerly of Michigan 
University, has discovered two or more comets, written 
much on solar eclipses, the " canals " of Mars, and the 
sun's corona. He, with Professor S. W. Burnham, went 
to South America to observe the solar eclipse of Dec. 
21-22, 1889 ; and the former took observations on the 
solar eclipse April 16, 1893, at Mina Bronces, Chili. 

Professor Burnham catalogued over one hundred and 
ninety-eight new double stars, which he discovered while 
at Mount Hamilton. He, with Professor Holden and 
others, have taken remarkable photographs of the moon ; 
and the negatives have been sent to Professor Weinek 
of Prague, who makes enlarged drawings and photo- 
graphs of them. Astronomers in Copenhagen, Vienna, 
Great Britain, and other parts of Europe, are working 
with the Lick astronomers. Star :maps, in both northern 
and southern hemispheres, have been made at the Lick 
Observatory, and photographs of the milky way, the 
sun and its spots, comets, nebula?, Mars, Jupiter, etc. 
Professor Holden has written much in the magazines, 



200 JAMES LICK. 

the Century, McClure's, The Forum, and elsewhere, con- 
cerning these photographs, " What we really know about 
Mars," and kindred topics. 

Professor Perrine discovered a new comet in February, 
189G, which for some time travelled towards the earth 
at the rate of 1,600,000 miles per day. Professor David 
P. Todd of Amherst College was enabled to make at the 
Lick Observatory the finest photographs ever made of 
the transit of Venus, Dec. 6, 1882. As there will not 
be another transit of Venus till Jan. 8, 2004, so that no 
living astronomer will ever behold another, this transit 
was of special importance. The transit of Mercury was 
also observed in 1881 by Professor Holden and others. 

The equipment at the Lick Observatory is admirable, 
and the sight excellent ; but the income from the $90,000 
endowment is too small to allow the desired work. There 
are but seven observers at Mount Hamilton, while at 
Greenwich, at Paris, and other observatories, there are 
from forty to fifty men. The total income for salaries 
and all other expenses is $22,000 at the Lick Observa- 
tory ; at Paris, Greenwich, Harvard College, the United 
States Naval Observatory at Washington, etc., from 
$60,000 to $100,000 is spent yearly, and is all useful. 
Fellowships producing $600 a year are greatly needed, 
to be named after the givers, and the money to provide 
a larger force of astronomers. Mr. Lick's great gift has 
been nobly begun, but funds are necessary to carry on 
the work. 



LELAND STANFORD 



AND HIS UNIVERSITY. 



" The biographer of Leland Stanford will have to tell 
the fascinating story of a career almost matchless in the 
splendor of its incidents. It was partly due to the cir- 
cumstances of his time, but chiefly due to the largeness 
and boldness of his nature, that this plain, simple man 
succeeded in cutting so broad a swath. He lived at the 
top of his possibilities." Thus wrote Dr. Albert Shaw 
in the Review of Reviews, August, 1893. 

Leland Stanford, farmer-boy, lawyer, railroad builder, 
governor, United States Senator, and munificent giver, 
was born at Watervliet, N.Y., eight miles from Albany, 
March 9, 1824. He was the fourth son in a family of 
seven sons and one daughter, the latter dying in infancy. 

His father, Josiah Stanford, was a native of Massa- 
chusetts, but moved with his parents to the State of 
New York when he was a boy. He became a success- 
ful farmer, calling his farm by the attractive name of 
Elm Grove. He had the energy and industry which 
it seems Leland inherited. He built roads and bridges 
in the neighborhood, and was an earnest advocate of 
DeWitt Clinton's scheme of the Erie Canal, connect- 
ing the great lakes with New York City by way of the 
Hudson River. 

201 



202 LELANJ) STANFORD. 

" Gouverneur Morris had first suggested the Erie 
Canal in 1777," says T. W. Higginson, "and Washing- 
ton had indeed proposed a system of such waterways in 
1771. But the first actual work of this kind in the 
United States was that dug around Turner's Falls in 
Massachusetts soon after 1792. In 1803 DeWitt Clin- 
ton again proposed the Erie Canal. It was begun in 
1817, and opened July 4, 1825, being cut mainly through 
a wilderness. The effect produced on public opinion 
was absolutely startling. When men found that the 
time from Albany to Buffalo was reduced one-half, and 
that the freight on a ton of merchandise was cut down 
from $100 to $10, and ultimately to $3, similar enter- 
prises sprang into being everywhere." 

People were not excited over canals only ; everybody 
was interested about the coining railroads. George 
Stephenson, in the midst of the greatest opposition, land- 
owners even driving the surveyors off their grounds, 
had built a road from Liverpool to Manchester, Eng- 
land, which was opened Sept. 15, 1830. The previous 
month, August, the Mohawk and Hudson River Rail- 
road from Albany to Schenectady, sixteen miles, was 
commenced, a charter having been granted sometime 
before this. Josiah Stanford was greatly interested in 
this enterprise, and took large contracts for grading. 
Men at the Stanford home talked of the great future 
of railroads in America, and even prophesied a road to 
Oregon. " Young as he was when the question of a 
railroad to Oregon was first agitated," says a writer, 
" Leland Stanford took a lively interest in the measure. 
Among its chief advocates at that early day was Mr. 
Whitney, one of the engineers in the construction of the 




LELAND STANFORD. 



LELAND STANFORD. 203 

Mohawk and Hudson River Railway. On one occasion, 
when Whitney passed the night at Elm Grove, Leland 
being then thirteen years of age, the conversation ran 
largely on this overland railway project ; and the effect 
upon the mind of such a boy may be readily imagined. 
The remembrance of that night's discussion between 
Whitney and his father never left him, but bore the 
grandest fruits." 

The cheerful, big-hearted boy worked on his father's 
farm with his brothers, rising at five o'clock, even on 
cold winter mornings, that he might get his work done 
before school hours. He himself tells how he earned 
his first dollar. " I was about six years old," he said. 
"Two of my brothers and I gathered a lot of horse- 
radish from the garden, washed it clean, took it to 
Schenectady, and sold it. I got two of the six shillings 
received. I was very proud of my money. My next 
financial venture was two years later. Our hired man 
came from Albany, and told us chestnuts were high. 
The boys had a lot of them on hand which we had gath- 
ered in the fall. We hurried off to market with them, 
and sold them for twenty-five dollars. That was a good 
deal of money when grown men were getting only two 
shillings a day." 

Perhaps the boy felt that he should not always like 
to work on the farm, for he had made up his mind to 
get an education if possible. When he was eighteen his 
father bought a piece of woodland, and told him if he 
would cut off the timber he might have the money re- 
ceived for it. He immediately hired several persons to 
help him, and together they cut and piled 2,600 cords 
of wood, which Leland sold to the Mohawk and Hudson 
River Railroad at a profit of $2,600. 



204 LELAND STANFORD. 

After using some of this money to pay for his school- 
ing at an academy at Clinton, N.Y., he went to Al- 
bany, and for three years studied law with the firm of 
Wheaton, Doolittle, & Hadley. He disliked Greek and 
Latin, but was fond of science, particularly geology 
and chemistry, and was a great reader, especially of 
the newspapers. He attended all the lectures attain- 
able, and was fond of discussion upon all progressive 
topics. Later in life he studied sociological matters, 
and read John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer. 

Young Stanford determined to try his fortune in the 
West. He went as far as Chicago, and found it low, 
marshy, and unattractive. This was in 1848, when he 
was twenty-four years old. The town had been organ- 
ized but fifteen years, and did not have much to boast 
of. There were only twenty-eight voters in Chicago in 
1833. In 1837 the entire population was 4,470. Chi- 
cago had grown rapidly by 1848 ; but mosquitoes were 
abundant, and towns farther up Lake Michigan gave 
better promise for the future. Mr. Stanford finally set- 
tled at Port Washington, Wis., above Milwaukee, which 
place it was thought would prove a rival of Chicago. 
Forty years later, in 1890, Port Washington had a 
population of 1,659, while Chicago had increased to 
1,099,850. 

Mr. Stanford did well the first year at Port Washing- 
ton, earning $1,260. He remained another year, and 
then, at twenty-six, went back to Albany to marry Miss 
Jane Lathrop, daughter of Mr. Dyer Lathrop, a re- 
spected merchant. They returned to Port Washington, 
but Mr. Stanford did not find the work of a country 
lawyer congenial. He had chosen his profession, how- 



LELAND STANFORD. 205 

ever, and would have gone on to a measure of success in 
it, probably, had not an accident opened up a new field. 

He had been back from his wedding journey but a 
year or more, when a fire swept away all his posses- 
sions, including a quite valuable law library. The 
young couple were really bankrupt, but they determined 
not to return to Albany for a home. 

Several of Mr. Stanford's brothers had gone to Cali- 
fornia in 1849, after the gold-fields were discovered, 
and had opened stores near the mining-camps. If Le- 
land were to join them, it would give him at least more 
variety than the quiet life at Port Washington. The 
young wife went back to Albany to care for three years 
for her invalid father, who died in April, 1855. The 
husband sailed from New York, spending twelve days 
in crossing the isthmus, and in thirty-eight days reached 
San Francisco, July 12, 1852. For four years he had 
charge of a branch store at Michigan Bluffs, Placer 
County, among the miners. 

He engaged also in mining, and was not afraid of 
the labor and privations of the camp. He said some 
years later, " The true history of the Argonauts of the 
nineteenth century has to be written. They had no 
Jason to lead them, no oracles to prophesy success nor 
enchantments to avert dangers ; but, like self-reliant 
Americans, they pressed forward to the land of prom- 
ise, and travelled thousands of miles, when the Greek 
heroes travelled hundreds. They went by ship and by 
wagon, on horseback and on foot ; a mighty army, pass- 
ing over mountains and deserts, enduring privations and 
sickness ; they were the creators of a commonwealth, 
the builders of states." 



206 LELANB STANFORD. 

Mr. Stanford had the energy of his father ; he had 
learned how to work while on the farm, and he had a 
pleasant and kindly manner to all. Said a friend of 
his, after Mr. Stanford had become the governor of a 
great State, and the possessor of many millions, " The 
man who held the throttle of the locomotive, he who 
handled the train, worked the brake, laid the rail, or 
shovelled the sand, was his comrade, friend, and equal. 
His life was one of tender, thoughtful compassion for 
the man less fortunate in life than himself." 

The young lawyer was making money, and a good 
reputation as well, in the mining-camps. Says an old 
associate, " Mr. Stanford in an unusual degree com- 
manded the respect of the heterogeneous lot of men 
who composed the mining classes, and was frequently 
referred to by them as a sort of arbitrator in settling 
their disputes for them. While at Michigan Bluffs he 
was elected a justice of the peace, which office was the 
court before which all disputes and contentions of the 
miners and their claims were settled. It is a singular 
fact, with all the questions that came before him for 
settlement, not one of them was appealed to a higher 
court. 

"Leland Stanford was at this time just as gentle in 
his manner and as cordial and respectful to all as in his 
later years. Yet he was possessed of a courage which, 
when tested, as occasion sometimes required, satisfied 
the rough element that he was not a man who could be 
imposed upon. His principle seemed to be to stand up 
for the right at all times. He never indulged in pro- 
fanity or coarse words of any kind, and was as consid- 
erate in his conduct when holding intercourse with the 



LELANB STANFORD. 207 

rough element as though in the midst of the highest 
refinement." 

Mr. Stanford had prospered so well that in 1855 he 
purchased the business of his brothers in Sacramento, 
and went East to bring his wife to the Pacific Coast. 
He studied his business carefully. He made himself 
conversant with the statistics of trade, the tariff laws, 
the best markets and means of transportation. He read 
and thought, while some others idled away their hours. 
He was deeply interested in the new Republican party, 
which was then in the minority in California. He 
believed in it, and worked earnestly for it. When the 
party was organized in the State in 1856, he was one of 
the founders of it. He became a candidate for State 
treasurer, and was defeated. Three years later he was 
nominated for governor; "but the party was too small 
to have any chance, and the contest lay between oppos- 
ing Democratic factions." Mr. Stanford was to learn 
how to win success against fires and political defeats. 

A year later he was a delegate at large to the Repub- 
lican National Convention ; and instead of supporting 
Mr. Seward, who was from his own State of New York, 
he worked earnestly for Abraham Lincoln, with whom 
he formed a lasting friendship. After Mr. Lincoln was 
inaugurated, Mr. Stanford remained in Washington sev- 
eral weeks, at the request of the president and Secretary 
Seward, to confer with them about the surest means of 
keeping California loyal to the Union. 

Mr. Blaine says of California and Oregon at this 
time : " Jefferson Davis had expected, with a confidence 
amounting to certainty, and based, it is believed, on 
personal pledges, that the Pacific Coast, if it did not 



208 LELAND STANFORD. 

actually join the South, would be disloyal to the Union, 
and would, from its remoteness and its superlative im- 
portance, require a large contingent of the national 
forces to hold it in subjection. 

" It was expected by the South that California and 
Oregon would give at least as much trouble as Kentucky 
and Missouri, and would thus indirectly, but powerfully, 
aid the Southern cause." 

In the spring of 1861 Mr. Stanford was again nom- 
inated by the Eepublicans for governor. Though he 
declined at first, after he had consented, with his usual 
vigor, earnestness, and perseverance, with faith in him- 
self and his fellow-men as well, he and his friends made 
a thorough and spirited canvass ; and Mr. Stanford re- 
ceived 56,036 votes, about six times as many as were 
given him two years before. 

"The period," says the San Francisco Chronicle, 
" was one of unexampled difficulty of administration ; 
and to add to the embarrassments occasioned by the 
Civil War, the city of Sacramento and a vast area of 
the valley were inundated. On the day appointed for 
the inauguration the streets of Sacramento were swept 
by a flood, and Mr. Stanford and his friends were com- 
pelled to go and return to the Capitol in boats. The 
messages of Governor Stanford, and indeed all his state 
papers, indicated wide information, great common-sense, 
and a comprehensive grasp of State and national affairs, 
remarkable in one who had never before held office 
under either the State or national government. During 
his administration he kept up constant and cordial in- 
tercourse with Washington, and had the satisfaction of 
leaving the chair of state at the close of his term of 



LELAND STANFORD. 209 

office feeling that no State in the Union was more thor- 
oughly loyal." 

There was much disloyalty in California at first, but 
Mr. Stanford was firm as well as conciliatory. The 
militia was organized, a State normal school was estab- 
lished, and the indebtedness of the State reduced one- 
half under his leadership as governor. 

After the war was over, Governor Stanford cherished 
no animosities. When Mr. Lamar's name was sent to 
the Senate as associate justice of the Supreme Court, 
and many were opposed, Mr. Stanford said, "No man 
sympathized more sincerely than myself with the cause 
of the Union, or deprecated more the cause of the South. 
I would have given fortune and life to have defeated 
that cause. But the war has terminated, and what this 
country needs now is absolute and profound peace. 
Lamar was a representative Southern man, and adhered 
to the convictions of his boyhood and manhood. There 
never can be pacification in this country until these war 
memories are obliterated by the action of the Executive 
and of Congress." 

Mr. Stanford declined a re-election to the governor- 
ship, because he wished to give his time to the building 
of a railroad across the continent. He had never forgot- 
ten the conversation in his father's home about a rail- 
road to Oregon. When he went back to Albany for 
Mrs. Stanford, after being a storekeeper among the 
mines, and she was ill from the tiresome journey, he 
cheered her with the promise, " Never mind ; a time 
will come when I will build a railroad for you to go 
home on." 

Every one knew that a railroad was needed. Yes- 



210 LELAND STANFORD. 

sels had to go around Cape Horn, and troops and prod- 
uce had to be transported over the mountains and across 
the plains at great expense and much hardship. Some 
persons believed the building of a road over the snow- 
cupped Sierra Nevada Mountains was possible; but 
most laughed the project to scorn, and denounced it as 
"a wild scheme of visionary cranks." 

" The huge snow-clad chain of the Sierra Nevadas," 
says Mr. Perkins, the senator from California who suc- 
ceeded Mr. Stanford, "whose towering steeps nowhere 
permitted a thoroughfare at an elevation less than seven 
thousand feet above the sea, must be crossed ; great des- 
erts, waterless, and roamed by savage tribes, must be 
made accessible; vast sums of money must be raised, 
and national aid secured at a time in which the credit 
of the central government had fallen so low that its 
bonds of guaranty to the undertaking sold for barely 
one-third their face value." 

In the presence of such obstacles no one seemed ready 
to undertake the work of building the railroad. One of 
the persistent advocates of the plan was Theodore J. 
Judah, the engineer of the Sacramento Valley and other 
local railroads. He had convinced Mr. Stanford that 
the thing was possible. The latter first talked with C. 
P. Huntington, a hardware merchant of Sacramento ; 
then with Mark Hopkins, Mr. Huntington's partner, 
and later with Charles Crocker and others. A fund 
was raised to enable Mr. Judah and his associates to 
perfect their surveys ; and the Central Pacific Railroad 
Company was formed, June 28, 1861, with Mr. Stanford 
as president. 

In Mr. Stanford's inaugural address as governor he 



LELANB STANFORD. 211 

had dwelt upon the necessity of this railroad to unite 
the East and the West; and now that he had retired 
from the gubernatorial office, he determined to push the 
enterprise with all his power. Neither he nor his asso- 
ciates had any great wealth at their command, but they 
had faith and force of character. The aid of Congress 
was sought and obtained by a strictly party vote, Repub- 
licans being in the majority; and the bill was signed by 
President Lincoln, July 1, 1862. 

The government agreed to give the company the alter- 
nate sections of 640 acres in a belt of land ten miles 
wide on each side of the railroad, and $16,000 per mile 
in bonds for the easily constructed portion of the road, 
and $32,000 and $48,000 per mile for the mountainous 
portions. The company was to build forty miles before 
it received government aid. 

It was so difficult to raise money during the Civil 
War that Congress made a more liberal grant July 2, 
1864, whereby the company received alternate sections 
of land within a belt twenty miles on each side of the 
road, or the large amount of 12,800 acres per mile, mak- 
ing for the company nearly 9,000,000 acres of land. 
The government was to retain, to apply on its debt, only 
half the money it owed the company for transportation 
instead of the whole. The most important provision of 
the new Act was the authority of the company to issue 
its own first-mortgage bonds to an amount not exceeding 
those of the United States, and making the latter take 
a second mortgage. 

There is no question but the United States has given 
lavishly to railroads, as the cities have given their 
streets free to street railroads ; but during the Civil 



212 LELANB STANFORD. 

War the need of communication between East and West 
seemed to make it wise to build the road at almost any 
sacrifice. Mr. Blaine says, " Many capitalists who after- 
wards indulged in denunciations of Congress for the ex- 
travagance of the grants, were urged at the time to take 
a share in the scheme, but declined because of the great 
risk involved." 

Mr. Stanford broke ground for the railroad by turn- 
ing the first shovelful of earth early in 1863. "At 
times failure seemed inevitable," says the New York 
Tribune, June 22, 1893. "Even the stout-hearted 
Crocker declared that there were times when he would 
have been glad to ' lose all and quit ; ' but the iron 
will of Stanford triumphed over everything. As presi- 
dent of the road he superintended its construction over 
the mountains, building 530 miles in 293 days. On the 
last day, Crocker laid the rails on more than ten miles 
of track. That the great railroad builders survived the 
ordeal is a marvel. Crocker, indeed, never recovered 
from the effects of the terrific strain. He died in 1888. 
Hopkins died twelve years before, in 1876." 

With a silver hammer Governor Stanford drove a 
golden spike at Promontory Point, Utah, May 10, 
1869, which completed the line of the Central Pacific, 
and joined it with the Union Pacific Railroad, and 
the telegraph flashed the news from the Atlantic to 
the Pacific. The Union Pacific was built from Omaha, 
Neb., to Promontory Point, though Ogden, Utah, fifty- 
two miles east of Promontory Point, is now considered 
the dividing line. 

After this road was completed, Mr. Stanford turned 
to other labors. He was made president or director of 



L ELAND STANFORD. 213 

several railroads, — the Southern Pacific, the California 
& Oregon, and other connecting lines. He was also 
president of the Oriental and Occidental Steamship 
Company, which plied between San Francisco and 
Chinese ports, and was interested in street railroads, 
woollen mills, and the manufacture of sugar. 

Foreseeing the great future of California, he pur- 
chased very large tracts of land, including Vina with 
nearly 60,000 acres, the Gridley Ranch with 22,000 
acres, and his summer home, Palo Alto, thirty miles 
from San Francisco, with 8,400 acres. He built a 
stately home in San Francisco costing over $1,000,000, 
and in his journeys abroad collected for it costly paint- 
ings and other works of art. 

But his chief delight was in his Palo Alto estate. 
Here he sought to plant every variety of tree, from 
the world over, that would grow in California. Many 
thousands were set out each year. He was a great 
lover of trees, and could tell the various kinds from 
the bark or leaf. 

He loved animals, especially the horse, and had the 
largest horse farm for raising horses in the world. 
Some of his remarkable thoroughbreds and trotters were 
Electioneer, Arion, Palo Alto, Sunol, "the flying filly," 
Racine, Piedmont that cost $30,000, and many others. 
He spent $40,000, it is said, in experiments in instan- 
taneous photography of the horse ; and a book resulted, 
" The Horse in Motion," which showed that the ideas of 
painters about a horse at high speed were usually wrong. 
No one was ever allowed to kick or whip a horse or 
destroy a bird on the estate. Mr. George T. Angell 
of Boston tells of the remark made to General Francis 



214 LELAND STANFORD. 

A. Walker by Mr. Stanford. The horses of the latter 
were so gentle that they would put their noses on his 
shoulder, or come up to visitors to be petted. " How 
do you contrive to have your horses so gentle ? " asked 
General Walker. " I never allow a man to speak un- 
kindly to one of my horses; and if a man swears at one 
of them, I discharge him," was the reply. There were 
large greenhouses and vegetable gardens at Palo Alto, 
and acres of wheat, rye, oats, and barley. But the 
most interesting and beautiful and highly prized of all 
the charms at Palo Alto was an only child, a lad named 
Leland Stanford, Jr. He was never a rugged boy ; but 
his sunny, generous nature and intellectual qualities 
gave great promise of future usefulness. Mrs. Sallie 
Joy White, in the January, 1892, Wide Aivake, tells 
some interesting things about him. She says, "His 
chosen playmate was a little lame boy, the son of peo- 
ple in moderate circumstances, who lived near the Stan- 
fords in San Francisco. The two were together almost 
constantly, and each was at home in the other's house. 
He was very considerate of his little playfellow, and 
constituted himself his protector." 

When Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper was making efforts to 
raise money for the free kindergarten work in San Fran- 
cisco suggested by Felix Adler in 1878, she called on 
Mrs. Stanford, and the boy Leland heard the story of 
the needs of poor children. Putting his hand in his 
mother's, he said, " Mamma, we must help those chil- 
dren." 

"Well, Leland," said his mother, "what do you wish 
me to do ? " 

" Give Mrs. Cooper $500 now, and let her start a 



LELAND STANFORD. 215 

school, then come to us for more." And Leland's wish 
was gratified. 

" Between this time, 1879, and 1892," says Miss M. V. 
Lewis in the Home Maker for January, 1892, " Mrs. 
Leland Stanford has given $160,000, including a perma- 
nent endowment fund of $100,000 for the San Francisco 
kindergartens." She supports seven or more, five in 
San Francisco, and two at Palo Alto. 

A writer in the press says, " Her name is down for 
$8,000 a year for these schools, and I am told she spends 
much more. I attended a reception given her by the 
eight schools under her patronage ; and it was a very 
affecting sight to watch these four hundred children, all 
under four years of age, marching into the hall and up 
to their benefactor, each tiny hand grasping a fragrant 
rose which was deposited in Mrs. Stanford's lap. These 
children are gathered from the slums of the city. It is 
far wiser to establish schools for the training of such 
as these, than to wait until sin and crime have done 
their work, and then make a great show of trying to 
reclaim them through reformatory institutions." 

Leland, Jr., was very fond of animals. Mrs. White 
tells this story : " One day, when he was about ten years 
of age, he was standing looking out of the window, and 
his mother heard a tumult outside, and saw Leland sud- 
denly dash out of the house, down the steps, into a 
crowd of boys in front of the house. Presently he re- 
appeared covered with dust, holding a homely yellow 
dog in his arms. Quick as a flash he was up the steps 
and into the house with the door shut behind him, 
while a perfect howl of rage went up from the boys 
outside. 



216 LELAND STANFORD. 

" Before his mother could reach him he had flown to 
the telephone, and summoned the family doctor. Think- 
ing from the agonized tones of the boy that some of the 
family had been taken suddenly and violently ill, the 
doctor hastened to the house. 

" He was a stately old gentleman, who believed fully 
in the dignity of his profession ; and he was somewhat 
disconcerted and a good deal annoyed at being con- 
fronted with a very dusty, excited boy, holding a 
broken-legged dog that was evidently of the mongrel 
family. At first he was about to be angry ; but the 
earnest, pleading look on the little face, and the per- 
fect innocence of any intent of discourtesy, disarmed 
the dignified doctor, and he explained to Leland that 
he did not understand the case, not being accustomed 
to treating dogs, but that he would take him and the 
dog to one who was. So they went, doctor, boy, and 
dog, in the doctor's carriage to a veterinary surgeon, 
the leg was set, and they returned home. Leland took 
the most faithful care of the dog until it recovered, and 
it repaid him with a devotion that w T as touching." 

Leland, knowing that he was to be the heir of many 
millions, was already thinking how some of the money 
should be used. He had begun to gather materials for 
a museum, to which the parents devoted two rooms in 
their San Francisco home. He was fitting himself for 
Yale College, was excellent in French and German, and 
greatly interested in art and archaeology. Before enter- 
ing upon the long course of study at college, he trav- 
elled with his parents abroad. In Athens, in London, 
on the Bosphorus, everywhere, with an open hand, his 
parents allowed him to gather treasures for his museum, 



L ELAND STANFORD. 217 

and for a larger institution which he had in mind to 
establish sometime. 

While staying for a while in Rome, symptoms of 
fever developed in young Leland, and he was taken 
at once to Florence. The best medical skill was of no 
avail; and he soon died, March 13, 1884, two months 
before his sixteenth birthday. His parents telegraphed 
this sad message home, " Our darling boy went to 
heaven this morning." 

The story is told that while watching by the bedside 
of his son, worn with care and anxiety, Governor Stan- 
ford fell asleep, and dreamed that his son said to him, 
" Father, don't say you have nothing to live for ; you 
have a great deal to live for. Live for humanity, 
father," and that this dream proved a comforter. 

The almost prostrated parents brought home their 
beloved boy to bury him at Palo Alto. On Thanks- 
giving Day, Thursday, Nov. 27, 1884, the doors of the 
tomb which had been prepared near the house were 
opened at noon, and Leland Stanford, Jr., was laid 
away for all time from the sight of those who loved 
him. The bearers were sixteen of the oldest employees 
on the Palo Alto farm. The sarcophagus in which 
Leland, Jr., sleeps is eight feet four inches long, four 
feet wide, and three feet six inches high, built of 
pressed bricks, with slabs of white Carrara marble one 
inch thick firmly fastened to the bricks with cement. 
In the front slab of this sarcophagus are cut these 

words : - 

Born in Mortality 

May 14, 1868, 

LELAND STANFORD, JR. 

Passed to Immortality 
March 13, 1884. 



218 LELAND STANFORD. 

Electric wires were placed in the walls of the tomb, in 
the doors of iron, and even in the foundations, so that 
no sacrilegious hand should disturb the repose of the 
sleeper without detection. Memorial services for young 
Leland were held in Grace Church, San Francisco, on the 
morning of Sunday, Nov. 30, 1884, the Rev. Dr. J. P. 
Newman of New York preaching an eloquent sermon. 
The floral decorations were exquisite ; one bower fifteen 
feet high with four floral posts supporting floral arches, 
a cross six feet high of white camellias, lilies, and tuber- 
oses, relieved by scarlet and crimson buds, and pillows 
and wreaths of great beauty. 

"Nature had highly favored him for some noble 
purpose," said Dr. Newman. "Although so young, he 
was tall and graceful as some Apollo Belvidere, with 
classic features some master would have chosen to 
chisel in marble or cast in bronze ; with eyes soft and 
gentle as an angel's, yet dreamy as the vision of a seer ; 
with broad, white forehead, home of a radiant soul. . . . 
He was more than a son to his parents, — he was their 
companion. He was as an angel in his mother's sick 
room, wherein he would sit for hours and talk of all he 
had seen, and would cheer her hope of returning health 
by the assurance that he had prayed on his knees for 
her recovery on each of the twenty-four steps of the 
Scala Santa in Rome, and that when he was but eleven 
years old. . . . 

" He had selected, catalogued, and described for his 
projected museum seventeen cases of antique glass 
vases, bronze work, and terra-cotta statuettes, dating 
back far into the centuries, and which illustrate the 
creative genius of those early ages of our race." 



LELANB STANFORD. 219 

Such a youth wasted no time in foolish pleasures or 
useless companions. Like his father he loved history, 
and sought out, says Dr. Newman, the place where 
Pericles had spoken, and Socrates died ; " reverently 
pausing on Mars Hill where St. Paul had preached 
' Jesus and the Kesurrection ; ' and lingering with 
strange delight in the temple of Eleusis wherein death 
kissed his cheek into a consuming fire." 

At the close of Dr. Newman's memorial address the 
favorite h}^mn of young Leland was sung, " Tell Me the 
Old, Old Story." From this crushing blow of his son's 
death Mr. Stanford never recovered. For years young 
Leland's room in the San Francisco home was kept 
ready and in waiting, the lamp dimly lighted at night, 
and the bedclothes turned back by loving hands as 
if he were coming back again. The horses the boy 
used to ride were kept unused in pasture at Palo Alto, 
and cared for, for the sake of their fair young owner. 
The little yellow dog whose broken leg was set was 
left at Palo Alto when the boy went to Europe with 
his parents. When he was brought back a corpse, the 
dog knew all too well the story of the bereavement. 
After the body was placed in the tomb, the faithful 
creature took his place in front of the door. He could 
not be coaxed away even for his food, and one morning 
he was found there dead. He was buried near his de- 
voted human friend. 

" Toots," an old black and tan whom young Leland 
had brought from Albany, was much beloved. "Mr. 
Stanford would not allow a dog in the house save 
this one," says a writer in the San Francisco Chronicle. 
" ' Toots ' was an exception, and he had full run of the 



220 LELAND STANFORD. 

house. He was the envy of all the clogs, even of the 
noble old Great Dane. ' Toots ' would climb upon 
the sofa alongside of Mr. Stanford, and forgetting a 
well-known repugnance he would pet him and say, 
' There is always a place for you ; always a place for 
you.' " 

The year following the death of young Leland, on 
Nov. 14, 1885, Mr. Stanford and his wife founded and 
endowed their great University at Palo Alto. In con- 
veying the estates to the trustees, Mr. Stanford said, 
" Since the idea of establishing an institution of this 
kind for the benefit of mankind came directly and 
largely from our son and only child, Leland, and in the 
belief that had he been spared to advise us as to the 
disposition of our estate he would have desired the devo- 
tion of a large portion thereof to this purpose, we will 
that for all time to come the institution hereby founded 
shall bear his name, and shall be known as the " Leland 
Stanford, Jr., University." 

Mr. Stanford and his wife visited various institutions 
of learning throughout the country, and found consola- 
tion in raising this noble monument to a noble son — 
infinitely to be preferred to shafts or statues of marble 
and bronze. 

This same year, 1885, Mr. Stanford's friends, fearing 
the effect of his sorrow, and hoping to divert him some- 
what from it, secured his election by the California Le- 
gislature to the United States Senate. He took his seat 
March 4, 1885, just a year after the death of his son. 
He did not make many speeches, but he proved a very 
useful member from his good sense and counsel and 
kindly leaning toward all helpful legislation for the 



LELAND STANFOBT). 221 

poor and the unfortunate. He was re-elected March 3, 
1891, for a second term of six years. 

He will be most remembered in Congress for his 
Land-Loan Bill which he originated and presented to 
the Senate. " The bill proposed that money should be 
issued upon land to half the amount of its value, and 
for such loan the government Avas to receive an annual 
interest of two per cent yjer annum." 

" Whatever may be thought by some of the practical 
utility of his financial scheme," says Mr. Mitchell, a 
senator from Oregon, " which he so earnestly and ably 
advocated, and which was approved by millions of his 
countrymen, for the loaning of money by the United 
States direct to the people at a low rate of interest, tak- 
ing mortgages on farms as security, all will now agree 
it indicated in unmistakable terms a philanthropic spirit, 
an earnest desire to aid, through the instrumentality of 
what he regarded as constitutional and proper govern- 
mental influence, not the great moneyed institutions of 
the country, not the vast corporations of the land, with 
several of which he was prominently identified in a 
business way, but rather the great masses of producers, 
— the farmers, the planters, and the wage-workers of 
his country." 

In this connection the suggestion of Professor Rich- 
ard T. Ely in his book on " Socialism and Social Re- 
form," page 334, might well be heeded. After showing 
that Germany and other countries have used govern- 
ment credit to some extent in behalf of the farming 
community, and that New York State has been making 
loans to farmers for a generation or more, he says, " A 
sensible demand on the part of farmers' organizations 



222 LELAND STANFORD. 

would be that Congress should appoint a commission of 
experts to investigate thoroughly the use of government 
credit in various countries and at different times, in 
behalf of the individual citizen, especially the farmer, 
and to make a full and complete report, in order that 
anything which is done should be based upon the lessons 
to be derived from actual experience." 

Mr. and Mrs. Stanford were much beloved in Wash- 
ington for their cordiality and generosity. They gave 
an annual dinner to the Senate pages, with a gift for 
each boy of a gold scarf-pin, or something attractive, 
and at Christmas a five-dollar gold-piece to each. Also 
a luncheon each winter, and gifts of money, gloves, etc., 
to the telegraph and messenger boys. Every orphan 
asylum and charity hospital in Washington was remem- 
bered at Christmas. Mr. Sibly, representative for Penn- 
sylvania, relates this incident showing Mr. Stanford's 
habit of giving. "My partner and myself had pur- 
chased a young colt of him, for which we paid him 
$12,500. He took out his check-book, drew two checks 
of $6,250 each, and sent them to two different city 
homes for friendless children ; and with a twinkle in 
his eye, and broadly beaming benevolence in his fea- 
tures, said, ' Electric Bell ought to make a great horse ; 
he starts in making so many people happy in the very 
beginning of his life.' " 

Mr. Daniels of Virginia tells how Mr. Stanford was 
observed one day by a friend to give $2,000 to an 
inventor who was trying to apply an electric motor to 
the sewing-machine. Mr. Stanford remarked, " This is 
the thirtieth man to whom I have given a like sum to 
develop that idea." 



LELAND STANFORD. 223 

After Mr. Stanford had been in the Senate two years, 
on May 14, 1887, he and Mrs. Stanford laid the corner- 
stone of their University at Palo Alto, on the 19th 
anniversary of the birthday of Leland Stanford, Jr. In 
less than four years, on October 1, 1891, the doors of the 
University were opened to receive five hundred students, 
young men and women ; for Mr. Stanford had written in 
his grant of endowment " to afford equal facilities and 
give equal advantages in the University to both sexes." 
In his address to the trustees he said, " The rights of 
one sex, political or otherwise, are the same as those 
of the other sex, and this equality of rights ought to 
be fully recognized." 

Mrs. Stanford said to Mrs. White as they sat in her 
library at Palo Alto, " Whatever the boys have, the girls 
have as well. We mean that the girls of our country 
shall have a fair chance. There shall be no dividing 
line in the studies. If a girl desires to become an elec- 
trician, she shall have the opportunity, and that oppor- 
tunity shall be the same as the young men's. If she 
wishes to study mechanics, she may do it." 

Mr. Stanford said in his address on the day of open- 
ing, "I speak for Mrs. Stanford as well as for myself, 
for she has been my active and sympathetic coadjutor, 
and is co-grantor with me in the endowment and estab- 
lishment of this University." 

They had been urged to give their fortune in other 
directions, as some persons believed that much educa- 
tion would unfit people for labor. " We do not believe," 
said Mr. Stanford, and the world honors him for his 
belief, "there can be superfluous education. As man 
cannot have too much health and intelligence, so he can- 



224 LELAND STANFORD. 

not be too highly educated. Whether in the discharge 
of responsible or humble duties he will ever find the 
knowledge he has acquired through education, not only 
of practical assistance to him, but a factor in his per- 
sonal happiness, and a joy forever." 

Mr. Stanford desired that the students should " not 
only be scholars, but have a sound practical idea of 
commonplace, e very-day matters, a self-reliance that 
will fit them, in case of emergency, to earn their own 
livelihood in an humble as well as an exalted sphere." 
To this end he provided, besides the usual studies in 
colleges, for "mechanical institutes, laboratories, etc." 
There are departments of civil engineering, mechanical 
engineering, electrical engineering, besides shorthand 
and typewriting, agriculture, and other practical work. 

He wished to have taught in the University " the 
right and advantages of association and co-operation. 
. . . Laws should be formed to protect and develop 
co-operative associations. Laws with this object in 
view will furnish to the poor man complete protection 
against the monopoly of the rich ; and such laws, prop- 
erly administered and availed of, will insure to the 
workers of the country the full fruits of their industry 
and enterprise." 

He gave directions that "no drinking saloons shall be 
opened upon any part of the premises." He " prohib- 
ited sectarian instruction, "but wished "to have taught 
in the University the immortality of the soul, the exist- 
ence of an all-wise and benevolent Creator, and that 
obedience to His laws is the highest duty of man." Mr. 
Stanford said, " It seems to us that the welfare of man 
on earth depends on the belief in immortality, and that 



L ELAND STANFORD. 225 

the advantages of every good act and the disadvantages 
of every evil one follow man from this life into the 
next, there attaching to him as certainly as individuality 
is maintained." 

The object of the University is, he said, " to qualify 
students for personal success and direct usefulness in 
life." Again he said, " The object is not alone to give 
the student a technical education, fitting him for a suc- 
cessful business life, but it is also to instil into his 
mind an appreciation of the blessings of this govern- 
ment, a reverence for its institutions, and a love for God 
and humanity." 

Mr. Stanford wished plain and substantial buildings, 
" built as needed and no faster," urging the trustees to 
bear in mind " that extensive and expensive buildings 
do not make a university ; that it depends for its suc- 
cess rather upon the character and attainments of its 
faculty." 

Mr. Stanford chose for the president of his University 
David Starr Jordan, well-known for his scientific work 
and his various books. Though a comparatively young 
man, being forty years of age, Dr. Jordan had had wide 
experience. He was graduated from Cornell University 
in 1872, and for two years was professor at institutions 
in Illinois and Wisconsin. In 1874 he was .lecturer in 
marine botany at the Anderson School at Penikese, and 
the following year at the Harvard Summer School at 
Cumberland Gap. During the next four years, while 
holding the chair of biology in Butler University, In- 
dianapolis, he was the naturalist of two geological 
surveys in Indiana and Ohio. For six years he was 
professor of zoology in Indiana University, and for the 



226 L ELAND STANFORD. 

six years following its president. For fourteen years he 
had been assistant to the United States Fish Commis- 
sion, exploring many of our rivers, and part of that 
time agent for the United States Census Bureau in 
investigating the marine industries of the Pacific Coast. 
He had studied also in the large museums abroad. 

Dr. Albert Shaw tells this interesting incident. " Pres- 
ident Jordan had once met the young Stanford boy on 
the seashore, and won the lad's gratitude by telling him 
of shells and submarine life. It was a singular coinci- 
dence that the parents afterwards heard Dr. Jordan 
make allusions in a public address which gave them 
the knowledge that this was the interesting stranger 
who had taught their son so much, and had so enkindled 
the boy's enthusiasm. His choice as president was an 
eminently wise one." 

Mr. Stanford wished ten acres to be set aside " as a 
place of burial and of last rest on earth for the bodies 
of the grantors and of their son, Leland Stanford, Jr., 
and, as the board may direct, for the bodies of such 
other persons who may have been connected with the 
University." 

Mr. Stanford lived to see his University opened and 
doing successful work. The plan of its buildings, sug- 
gested by the old Spanish Missions of California, was 
originally that of Eichardson, the noted architect of 
Boston ; but as he died before it was completed, the 
work was done by his successors, Shepley, Kutan, & 
Coolidge. 

The plan contemplates a number of quadrangles in 
the midst of 8,400 acres. " The central group of build- 
ings will constitute two quadrangles, one entirely sur- 



LELAND STANFORD. 227 

rounding the other," says the University Register for 
1894-1895. " Of these the inner quadrangle, with the 
exception of the chapel, is now completed. Its twelve 
one-story buildings are connected by a continuous open 
arcade, facing a paved court 586 feet long by 246 feet 
wide, or three and a quarter acres. The buildings are 
of a buff sandstone, somewhat varied in color. The 
stone-work is of broken ashlar, with rough rock face, 
and the roofs are covered with red tile." Within the 
quadrangle are several circular beds of semi-tropical 
trees and plants. 

Miss Milicent W. Shinn, in the Overland Monthly for 
October, 1891, says, " I should think it hard to say too 
much of the simple dignity, the calm influence on mind 
and mood, of the great, bright court, the deep arcade 
with its long vista of columns and arches, the heavy 
walls, the unchanging stone surfaces. They seemed to 
me like the rock walls of nature ; they drew me back, 
and made me homesick for them when I had gone away." 

Behind the central quadrangle are the shops, foundry, 
and boiler-house. On the east side is Encina Hall, a 
dormitory for 315 men, provided with electric lights, 
steam heat, and bathrooms on each floor. It is four 
stories high, and, like the quadrangle, of buff Almaden 
sandstone. 

On the west side of the quadrangle is Eoble Hall, for 
one hundred young women, and is built of concrete. 
There are two gymnasiums, called Encina and Eoble 
gymnasiums. 

Perhaps the most interesting of all the buildings, the 
especial gift of Mrs. Stanford, is the Leland Stanford 
Junior Museum, of concrete, in Greek style of architec- 



228 L ELAND STANFORD. 

ture, 313 by 156 feet, including wings, situated a quar- 
ter of a mile from the quadrangle, and between the 
University and the Stanford residence. The collection 
made by young Leland is placed here, and his own 
arrangement reproduced. The collection includes Egyp- 
tian bronzes, Greek and Roman glass and statues. The 
Cesnola collection contains five thousand pieces of Greek 
and Roman pottery and glass. The Egyptian collection, 
made by Brugsch Bey, Curator of the Gizeh Museum, 
for Mrs. Stanford, comprises casts of statuary, mum- 
mies, scarabees, etc. Mr. Timothy Hopkins of San 
Francisco, one of the trustees, has given for the Egyp- 
tian collection embroideries dating from the sixth to 
the twenty-first dynasty. He has also given a collection 
of ancient and modern coins and costumes, household 
goods, etc., from Corea. There are stone implements 
from Copenhagen, Denmark, and relics from the mounds 
of America, Mrs. Stanford is making the collection of 
fine arts, and a very large number of copies of great 
paintings is intended. Much attention will be given to 
local history, Indian antiquities, and Spanish settle- 
ments of early California. 

The library has 23,000 volumes and 6,000 pamphlets. 
Mr. Hopkins has given a valuable collection of railway 
books, unusually rich in the early history of railways in 
Europe and America, with generous provision for its 
increase. Mr. Hopkins has also founded the Hopkins 
Seaside Laboratory at Pacific Grove, two miles west 
of Monterey, to provide for investigations in marine 
biology, as a branch of the biological work of the Uni- 
versity. 

Students are not received into the University under 



LELANB STANFORD. 229 

sixteen years of age, and if special students, not under 
twenty, and must present certificates of good moral 
character. If from other colleges they must bring let- 
ters of honorable dismissal. They are offered a choice 
of twenty-two subjects for entrance examination, and 
must pass in twelve subjects. Tuition in all depart- 
ments is free. 

"The degree of Bachelor of Arts is granted to stu- 
dents who have satisfactorily completed the equivalent 
of four years' work of 15 hours of lecture or recitation 
weekly, or a total of 120 hours, and who have also satis- 
fied the requirements in major and minor subjects." 

President Jordan says, in the Educational Review for 
June, 1892 : " In the arrangement of the courses of 
study two ideas are prominent : first, that every student 
who shall complete a course in the University must be 
thoroughly trained in some line of work. His educa- 
tion must have as its central axis an accurate and full 
knowledge of something. The second is that the degree 
to be received is wholly a subordinate matter, and that 
no student should be compelled to turn out of his way 
in order to secure it. The elective system is subjected 
to a single check. In order to prevent undue scattering, 
the student is required to select the work in general of 
some one professor as major subject or specialty, and to 
pursue this subject or line of subjects as far as the pro- 
fessor in charge may deem it wise or expedient. In 
order that all courses and all departments may be placed 
on exactly the same level, the degree of Bachelor of 
Arts is given in all alike for the equivalent of the four 
years' course. Should his major subject, for instance, 
be Greek, then the title is given that of Bachelor of 



230 LELAND STANFORD. 

Arts in Greek; should the major subject be chemistry, 
Bachelor of Arts in chemistry, and so on." 

In 1895 there were 1,100 students in the University, 
of whom 728 were men, and 372 women. Several of the 
students are from the New England States. 

Mr. Stanford spent over a million dollars in the Uni- 
versity buildings, and gave as an endowment over 89,000 
acres of land valued at more than five million dollars. 
The Palo Alto estate has 8,400 acres ; the Vina estate, 
o9,000 acres, with over 4,000 acres planted to grapes 
which are made into wine — those of us who are total 
abstainers regret such use; and the Gridlcy estate 
22,000 acres, one of California's great wheat farms. In 
years to come it is hoped that those properties, which 
arc never to be sold, will so increase in value that they 
will be worth several times five millions. 

Mr. and Mrs. Stanford made their wills, giving to the 
University "additional property," that the endowment, 
as Mr. Stanford said, " will be ample to establish and 
maintain a university of the highest grade." It has 
been stated, frequently, that the " full endowment " in 
land and money will be $20,000,000 or more. 

Senator Stanford's death came suddenly at the last, 
at Palo Alto, Tuesday, June 20-21, 1893. He had not 
been well for some time ; but Tuesday he had driven 
about the estate, with his usual interest and good cheer. 
He retired to rest about ten o'clock; and at midnight 
his wife, who occupied an adjoining apartment, heard a 
movement as if Mr. Stanford were making an effort to 
rise. She spoke to him, but received no answer. His 
breathing was unnatural ; and in a few minutes he passed 
away, apparently without pain. 



LELANI) STANFORD. 231 

Mr. Stanford was buried at Palo Alto, Saturday, June 
24. The body lay in the library of his home, in a black 
cloth-covered casket, with these words on the silver 

plate : — 

LELAND STANFORD. 

BORN TO MORTALITY MARCH 9, 1824. 

PASSED TO IMMORTALITY, JUNK 21, IS!):?. 

AOKD 69 YRS., 3 MOS., 12 DAYS. 

Flowers filled every part of the library. The Union 
League Club sent a floral piece representing the Stars 
and Stripes worked in red and white in " everlasting," 
with star lilies on a ground of violets. There was a 
triple arch of white and pink flowers representing the 
central arch of the main University building. There 
were wreaths and crosses and a broken wheel of carna- 
tions, hollyhocks, violets, white peas, and ferns. 

At half-past one, after all the employees had taken 
their last look of the man who had always been their 
friend, — one, seventy-six years old, who had worked 
with Mr. Stanford in the mine, broke down comrdetely, 
the body was borne to the quadrangle of the Univer- 
sity by eight of the oldest engineers in point of service 
on the Southern Pacific Railroad. The funeral cortege 
passed through a double line of the two hundred or more 
employees at Palo Alto, several Chinese laborers being 
at the end of the line. Senator Stanford was always 
opposed to any legislation against the Chinese. 

The body was placed on a platform at one end of the 
quadrangle, the remaining space being filled with several 
thousand persons. About sixteen hundred chairs wore 
provided, but these could accommodate only a small por- 
tion of those present. The platform was decorated with 



232 L ELAND STANFORD. 

ferns, smilax, white sweet peas, and thousands of St. 
Joseph's lilies. The temporary chancel was flanked by 
two remarkable flower pieces : on the left, a facsimile 
of the first locomotive ever purchased and operated on 
the Central Pacific Railroad, the " Governor Stanford," 
sent by the employees of the company. The boiler and 
smoke-stack were of mauve-colored sweet peas ; the 
headlight and bell were of yellow pansies ; the cab of 
white sweet peas bordered by yellow pansies ; the ten- 
der of white sweet peas edged by pansies and lined with 
ivy; on the side of the cab, in heliotrope, the name 
Governor Stanford. On the right of the bier was the 
gift of the employees of the Palo Alto stock-farm, a 
representation in sweet peas of the senator's favorite 
bay horse. 

After the burial service of the Episcopal Church, a 
solo, "0 sweet and blessed country," and address by 
Dr. Horatio Stebbins of the First Unitarian Church of 
San Francisco, the choir sang "Lead Kindly Light," 
and the body of Senator Stanford was conveyed through 
the cypress avenue to the mausoleum in the ten acres 
adjoining the residence grounds. The tomb is in the 
form of a Greek temple lined with white marble, 
guarded by a sphinx on either side of the entrance. 

Here beside the open doors stood another beautiful 
floral tribute, a shield eight feet high, of roses, lilies, 
and other flowers sent by the employees of the Sacra- 
mento Railroad shops. Worked in violets were the 
words "The Laborers' Tribute to the Laborers' Friend." 
The choir sang, " Abide with Me," the body was laid in 
the tomb, and the bronze doors were closed. A few 
days later the body of Leland Stanford, Junior, the boy 



LELANI) STANFORD. 233 

whose death, as Dr. Stebbins said at the senator's 
funeral, "drew the sunbeams out of the day/' was laid 
beside that of his father. Some time the mother will 
sleep here with her precious dead. 

Mr. Stanford's heart was bound up in his University. 
He said, after his son died, " The children of California 
shall be our children." Mr. Sibley of Pennsylvania tells 
how, three years after Leland Junior died, he and Mr. 
Stanford " went together to the tomb of the boy, and 
the father told amid tears and sobs how, since the death 
of his son, he had adopted and taken to his heart and 
love every friendless boy and girl in all the land, and 
that, so far as his means afforded, they should go to make 
the path of every such an one smoother and brighter." 

Mr. Stanford told Dr. Stebbins, in speaking of the 
University : " We feel [he always used the plural, thus 
including that womanly heart from whose fountains his 
life had ever been refreshed] that we have good ground 
for hope. We are very happy in our work. We do not 
feel that we are making great sacrifices. We feel that 
we are working with and for the Almighty Providence." 

By the will of Mr. Stanford the University receives 
two and a half million dollars, but this bequest is not 
yet available. He always felt, and rightly, that his 
wife owned all their large fortune equally with himself ; 
therefore he placed no restrictions upon her disposal of 
it. Inasmuch as she is a co-founder of the University, 
she will doubtless add largely to its endowment. Should 
she do this, the power of Leland Stanford Junior Uni- 
versity for good will be almost unlimited. 

Even granite mausoleums crumble away; but great 
deeds last forever, and make their doers immortal. 



CAPTAIN THOMAS CORAM 



AND HIS FOUNDLING ASYLUM. 



One of the best of England's charities is the Found- 
ling Asylum in London, founded in 1739 by Captain 
Thomas Coram. He was not a man of family or means, 
but he had a warm heart and great perseverance. For 
seventeen years he labored against indifference and pre- 
judice, till finally his home for little waifs and outcasts 
became a visible fact, and for more than a century has 
been doing its noble work. 

Captain Coram was born at Lyme Regis, in Dorset- 
shire, in 1668, a seapqrt town which carried on some 
trade with Newfoundland. It is probable that his 
father was a seafaring man, as the lad early followed 
that occupation. When he was twenty-six years old we 
hear of him in the New World at Taunton, Mass., earn- 
ing his living as a shipwright. 

He did not wait to become rich — as indeed he never 
was — before he began to plan good 'works. He had 
saved some money by the year 1703, when he was 
thirty-five ; for we see by the early records that he 
conveyed to the governor and other authorities in Taun- 
ton, fifty-nine acres to be used whenever the people so 
desired, for an Episcopal church or a schoolhouse. This 
gift, the deed alleges, was made " in consideration of 

284 




CAPTAIN THOMAS CORAM 



CAPTAIN THOMAS CORAM. 235 

the love and respect which the donor had and did bear 
unto the said church, as also for divers other good 
causes and considerations him especially at that present 
moving." 

Later he gave to Taunton a quite valuable library, a 
portion of which remains at present. A Book of Com- 
mon Prayer is now in the church, on whose title-page it 
is stated that it was the gift " by the Eight Honorable 
Arthur Onslow, Speaker of the Honourable House of 
Commons of Great Britain, one of His Majesty's most 
Honourable Privy Council, and Treasurer of His Majes- 
ty's Navy, etc., to Thomas Coram, of London, Gentle- 
man, for the use of a church, lately built at Taunton, in 
New England." 

About this time, 1703, Mr. Coram moved to Boston, 
and became the master of a ship. He was deeply inter- 
ested in the colonies of the mother country, and though 
in a comparativly humble station, began to project plans 
for their increase in commerce, and growth in wealth. 
In 1704 he helped to procure an Act of Parliament for 
encouraging the making of tar in the northern colonies of 
British America by a bounty to be paid on the importa- 
tion. Before this all the tar was brought from Sweden. 
The colonies were thereby saved five million dollars. 

In 1719, when on board the ship Sea Flower for 
Hamburgh, that he might obtain supplies of timber and 
other naval stores for the royal navy, Captain Coram 
was stranded off Cuxhaven and his cargo plundered. 

Some years later, in 1732, having become much in- 
terested in the settlement of Georgia, Captain Coram 
was appointed one' of the trustees by a charter from 
George II. 



236 CAPTAIN THOMAS CORAM. 

Three years after this, in 1735, the energetic Captain 
Coram addressed a memorial to George II., about the 
settlement of Nova Scotia, as he had found there " the 
best cod-fishing of any in the known parts of the world, 
and the land is well adapted for raising hemp and other 
naval stores." One hundred laboring men signed this 
memorial, asking for free passage thither, and protection 
after reaching Nova Scotia. 

Captain Coram was so interested in the project that 
he appeared on several occasions before the Lords Com- 
missioners for Trade and Plantations, and was, says 
Horace Walpole, "the most knowing person about the 
plantations I ever talked with." For several years 
nothing was done about his memorial, but before his 
death England took action about her now valuable 
colony. 

About 1720 Captain Coram lived in Rotherhithe, and 
going often to London early in the morning and return- 
ing late at night, became troubled about the infants 
whom he saw exposed or deserted in the public streets, 
sometimes dead, or dying, or perhaps murdered to avoid 
publicity. Sometimes these foundlings, if not deserted, 
were placed in poor families to whom a small sum was 
paid for their board; and often they were blinded or 
maimed as they grew older, and sent on the streets to 
beg. 

The young mother, usually homeless and friendless, 
was almost as helpless as her child if she tried to keep 
it and earn a living. People scorned her, or arrested 
her and threw her into prison : the shipmaster tried to 
find a remedy for the evil. 

He talked with his friends and acquaintances, but 



CAPTAIN THOMAS CORAM. 237 

no one seemed to care. He besought those high in au- 
thority, but few seemed to think that foundlings were 
worth saving. The poor and the disgraced should bear 
their sorrows alone. Some from all ranks thought the 
charity a noble one, and wondered that it had been so 
long neglected ; but none gave a penny, or put forth any 
effort. 

" His arguments," wrote Coram's most intimate friend, 
Dr. Brocklesby, "moved some, the natural humanity 
of their own temper more, his firm but generous exam- 
ple most of all ; and even people of rank began to be 
ashamed to see a man's hair become gray in the course 
of a solicitation by which he was to get nothing. Those 
who did not enter far enough into the case to compas- 
sionate the unhappy infants for whom he was a suitor, 
could not help pitying him." 

Captain Coram finally turned to woman for aid, and 
obtained the names of " twenty-one ladies of quality and 
distinction " who were willing to help in his project of 
a foundling asylum. Not all " ladies of quality " were 
willing to help, however ; for in the Foundling Hospital 
may be seen this note, attached to a memorial addressed 
to "H.B.H., the Princess Amelia." 

"On Innocents' Day, the 28th December, 1737, I 
went to St. James' Palace to present this petition, hav- 
ing been advised first to address the lady of the bed- 
chamber in waiting to introduce it. But the Lady Isa- 
bella Finch, who was the lady in waiting, gave me rough 
words, and bid me gone with my petition, which I did, 
without opportunity of presenting it." 

Finally Captain Coram's incessant labors bore fruit. 
On Tuesday, Nov. 20, 1739, at Somerset House, London, 



238 CAPTAIN THOMAS CORAM. 

a meeting of the nobility and gentry was held, appointed 
by his Majesty's royal charter to be governors and guar- 
dians of the hospital. Captain Coram, now seventy-one 
years of age, addressed the president, the Duke of Bed- 
ford, with great feeling. "My Lord," he said, "al- 
though my declining years will not permit me to hope 
seeing the full accomplishment of my wishes, yet I can 
now rest satisfied ; and it is what I esteem an ample re- 
ward of more than seventeen years' expensive labor and 
steady application, that I see your Grace at the head 
of this charitable trust, assisted by so many noble and 
honorable governors." 

The house for the foundlings was opened in Hatton 
Garden in 1741, no child being received over two months 
old. No questions as to parentage were to be asked; 
and Avhen no more infants could be taken in, the sign, 
"The house is full," was hung over the door. Some- 
times one hundred women would be at the door with 
babies in their arms ; and when only twenty could be 
received, the poor creatures would fight to be first at 
the door, that their child might find a home. Finally 
the infants were admitted by ballot, by means of balls 
drawn by the mothers out of a bag. If they drew a 
white ball, the child was received ; if a black ball, it was 
turned away. 

The present Foundling Hospital was begun in 1740, 
and the western wing finished and occupied in 1745, on 
the north side of Guilford Street, London, the govern- 
ors having bought the land, fifty-five acres, from the 
Earl of Salisbury. 

Hogarth, the painter, was deeply interested in Cap- 
tain Coram's benevolent object. He painted for the 



CAPTAIN THOMAS CORAM. 239 

hospital some of his finest pictures, and influenced his 
brother artists to do the same. Hogarth's " March to 
Finchley " was intended to be dedicated to George II. 
A proof print was accordingly presented to the king 
for his approval. The picture gives " a view of a mili- 
tary march, and the humors and disorders consequent 
thereon." 

The king was indignant, and exclaimed, "Does the 
fellow mean to laugh at my guards ? " 

" The picture, please your Majesty," said one of the 
bystanders, " must be considered as a burlesque." 

" What ! a painter burlesque a soldier ? He deserves 
to be picketed for his insolence," replied the king. 

The picture was returned to the mortified artist, who 
dedicated it to " the king of Prussia, an encourager of 
the arts." 

So many fine paintings were presented to the hospital, 
— one of Raphael's cartoons, a picture by Benjamin 
West, and others, — and such a crowd of people came 
daily to see them in splendid carriages and gilt sedan 
chairs, that the institution "became the most fashion- 
able morning lounge in the reign of George II." 

This exhibition of pictures of the united artists was 
the precursor of the Royal Academy, founded in 1768. 
Before this time the artists had their annual reunion 
and dinner together at the Foundling Hospital, the chil- 
dren entertaining them with music. 

Hogarth, notwithstanding his- busy life, requested 
that several of the infants should be sent to Chis- 
wick, where he resided ; and he and Mrs. Hogarth looked 
carefully after their welfare. It was the custom to 
send the babies into the country to be nursed by 



240 CAPTAIN THOMAS CORAM. 

some mother, as soon as they were received at the 
hospital. 

Handel, as well as Hogarth, was interested in the 
foundlings. The chapel had been erected by subscrip- 
tion in 1847. George II. subscribed £2,000 towards 
its erection, and £1,000 towards supplying a preacher. 
Handel offered a performance in vocal and instrumental 
music to raise money in building the chapel. The most 
distinguished persons in the realm came to hear the 
music. Over a thousand were present, the tickets being 
half a guinea each. 

Each year, as long as Handel was able to do so, he 
superintended the performance of his great Oratorio of 
the Messiah in the chapel, which netted the treasury 
£7,000. When he died he made the following bequest : 
" I give a fair copy of the Score, and all the parts 
of my Oratorio called the Messiah, to the Foundling 
Hospital." 

A singular gift to the hospital was from Omychund, 
a black merchant of Calcutta, who bequeathed to that 
and the Magdalen Hospital 37,500 current rupees, to be 
equally divided between them. 

Captain Coram lived ten years after his good work 
was begun. He loved to visit the hospital, and looked 
upon the children as if they were his own. He rejoiced 
in every gift, although he had no money of his own to 
give. He had buried his wife, Eunice, after whom the 
first girl at the hospital was named. The first boy was 
called Thomas Coram, after the founder. 

During the last two years of Captain C Oram's life, 
when it was known by his friends that he was without 
funds, Dr. Brocklesby called to ask him if a subscrip- 



CAPTAIN THOMAS CORAM. 241 

tion in his behalf would offend him. He replied, " I 
have not wasted the little wealth of which I was for- 
merly possessed in self-indulgence and vain expenses, 
and am not ashamed to confess that, in this my old age, 
I am poor." 

Mr. Gideon, his friend, obtained various sums from 
those interested. The late Prince of Wales subscribed 
twenty guineas yearly. 

Captain Coram, content with supplying his barest 
needs, turned his thoughts to more benevolence. He 
desired to unite the Indians in North America more 
closely to British interests, by establishing among them 
a school for girls. He lived long enough to make some 
progress in this work, but he was too old to be very 
active. 

He died at his lodgings near Leicester Square, on 
Friday, March 29, 1751, at the age of eighty-four, his 
last request being that he might be buried in the chapel 
of his Foundling Hospital. He was buried there 
April .3, at the east end of the vault, in a lead coffin en- 
closed in stone. His funeral was attended by a great 
concourse of people. The choir of St. Paul's Cathedral, 
with many notables, were at the hospital to receive the 
body, and pay it suitable honors. The shipmaster had 
won renown, not by learning or wealth, bat by disinter- 
ested benevolence. Seventeen years of patient and per- 
sistent labor brought its reward. 

In the southern arcade' of the chapel one may read a 
long inscription to the memory of 

CAPTAIN THOMAS CORAM, 

WHOSE NAME WILL NEVER WANT A MONUMENT AS 
LONG AS THIS HOSPITAL SHALL SUBSIST. 



242 CAPTAIN THOMAS CORAM. 

In front of the hospital is a fine statue of the founder 
by William Calder Marshall, R.A. ; and within, in the 
girls' dining-room, is Coranvs portrait by Hogarth. 

After fifteen years from the time of opening the hos- 
pital, the governors, their land having risen in value so 
that their income was larger, and Parliament having 
given £10,000, determined that their institution should 
be carried on in an unrestricted manner, as is the case 
in Russia and some other countries on the Continent. 

In Moscow the Foundling Hospital admits 13,000 chil- 
dren yearly. The mother may reclaim her child at any 
time before it is ten years of age. The state knows 
that the child has received a better start in life than it 
could have done with the poor mother. 

The Foundling Asylum at St. Petersburg, established 
by Catherine the Great, is the largest and finest in the 
world. The buildings cover twenty-eight acres, and the 
institution has an annual revenue from the government 
and from private sources of nearly $5,000,000. Thir- 
teen thousand babies are sometimes brought in one year, 
who but for this blessed charity would probably have 
been put out of the way. Twenty-five thousand found- 
lings are constantly enrolled. In Russia infanticide is 
said to be almost unknown. 

Married people, if poor, may bring their child for one 
year. If not able to provide for it at the end of that 
time, then it belongs to the state. The boys become 
mechanics, or enter the army and navy ; and the girls be- 
come teachers, nurses, etc. 

The Foundling Hospital in London determined to 
welcome all deserted or destitute infants, and save as 
many as possible from sin and want. A basket was 



CAPTAIN THOMAS CORAM. 243 

hung outside the gate of the hospital, and one hundred 
and seventeen infants were put in it the first day. 

Abuses of this kind intention soon crept in. Parents 
too poor to care for their children sent them from the 
country to London, and they died often on the way 
thither. One man, who carried five infants in a basket, 
got drunk on the journey, lay all night on a common, 
and three out of the five babies were found dead in the 
morning. Often the carriers stole all the clothing of 
the little ones, and they were thrown into the basket 
naked. Within four years about fifteen thousand babies 
were received, but only forty-four hundred lived to be 
sent out into homes. The mothers hated to part with 
their infants, and would often follow them for miles 
on foot. The poor mother would leave some token by 
which her child could be identified. Sometimes it was 
a coin or a ribbon, or possibly the daintiest cap the pov- 
erty of the mother would permit her to make. Some- 
times a verse of poetry was pinned on the dress : — 

"If Fortune should her favors give, 
That I in better plight might live, 
I'd try to have my boy again, 
And train him up the best of men." 

" The court-room of the Foundling," says a writer in 
" Chambers's Journal," " has probably witnessed as pain- 
ful scenes as any chamber in Great Britain ; and again, 
when the children, at five years old, are brought up to 
London, and separated from their foster-mothers, these 
scenes are renewed." 

"The stratagems resorted to by women to identify 
their children," says " Old and New London," " and to 



244 CAPTAIN THOMAS CORAM. 

assure themselves of their well-being, are often singu- 
larly touching. Sometimes notes are found pinned to 
the infant's garments, beseeching the nurse to tell the 
mother her name and residence, that the latter may 
visit the child during its stay in the country. They 
will also attend the baptism in the chapel, in the hope 
of hearing the name conferred upon the infant ; for, if 
they succeed in identifying the child during its stay at 
nurse, they can always preserve its identification during 
its subsequent abode in the hospital, since the children 
appear in chapel twice on Sunday, and dine in public 
on that day, which gives opportunity of seeing them 
from time to time, and preserving the recollection of 
their features." 

So many children were brought to the hospital after 
all restrictions were removed, in 1756, the death-roll 
was so large, and the expenses so great, that after four 
years different methods were adopted. There are now 
about five hundred children in the Foundling Hospital, 
who remain till they are fifteen years old, when they are 
apprenticed till of age at some kind of labor. None 
are received at the hospital except when a vacancy 
occurs, as the size of the buildings and funds will not 
permit more inmates. Usually about forty are received, 
one-sixth of those who apply. There is a fund pro- 
vided to help those in later life who prove idiotic or 
blind, or unfitted to earn their support. 

Sundays visitors in London go often to hear the 
trained voices of the foundlings. The girls, in their 
white caps and white kerchiefs, sit on one side of the 
organ, a gift from the great Handel, and the boys, neatly 
dressed, on the other side. There is a juvenile band of 



CAPTAIN THOMAS CORAM. 245 

musicians among the boys; and so well do they play, 
that, on leaving the institution, they often find positions 
in the bands of Her Majesty's Household Troops or in 
the navy. Lieutenant-Colonel James C. Hyde pre- 
sented the boys with a set of brass instruments, and 
some valuable drawings of native artists of India, for 
the adornment of their walls. 

Some time ago I visited with much interest the New 
York Foundling Hospital, on Sixty-eighth Street, six 
stories high, founded by and in charge of the Sisters of 
Charity. During the year 1895 there were cared for 
3,109 infants and little children, and 516 needy and 
homeless mothers. On one side of the Foundling Hos- 
pital is the Maternity Hospital, and on the other side 
the Children's Hospital. 

The cradle to receive the baby is placed within the 
vestibule, so that the Sister, when the bell is rung, may 
talk kindly with the person bringing it, and often per- 
suades her to remain for some months and care for her 
child. No information is sought as to names, family, 
etc. Other infants are taken into the country to be 
nursed by foster-mothers, and the institution does not 
lose its close oversight of the little ones. 

When these infants are unclaimed, they are usually 
sent to homes in the West to be adopted. Since the 
opening of the Foundling Hospital in 1869, twenty-six 
years ago, 27,171 waifs have been received and cared 
for. 

The " Nursery and Child's Hospital," Fifty-first Street 
and Lexington Avenue, carries on a work similar to the 
Foundling Asylum, and, though under Protestant con- 
trol, is not a denominational enterprise. 



246 CAPTAIN THOMAS CORAM. 

In Cleveland, Ohio, one of the most interesting chari- 
ties is the " Lida Baldwin Infants' Rest," for which 
Mr. H. R. Hatch has given an admirable building, at 
1416 Cedar Avenue, costing $17,000 or $18,000. Ba- 
bies, if over two years old, are taken to the Protestant 
Orphan Asylum on St. Clair Street. The " Rest " is 
named after the first wife of Mr. Hatch, an enterprising 
and philanthropic merchant, who, among other gifts, has 
just presented a handsome granite library building, cost- 
ing nearly $100,000, to Adelbert College of Western 
Reserve University. 

When Reuben Runyan Springer died in Cincinnati, 
Ohio, Dec. 10, 1884, at the age of eighty-four }^ears, he 
did not forget to give the Sisters of Charity $20,000 for 
a foundling asylum. His family were originally from 
Sweden. When a youth he was clerk on a steamboat 
from Cincinnati to New Orleans, and soon acquired 
an interest in the boat, and began his fortune. Later, 
he was partner in a grocery house. Mr. Springer gave 
to the Little Sisters of the Poor $35,000, Good Samar- 
itan Hospital $30,000, St. Peter's Benevolent Society 
$50,000, besides many other gifts. To music and art 
he gave $420,000. To his two faithful domestics and 
friends, he gave $7,500 each, and to his coachman his 
horses, carriages, harness, and $5,000. His various 
charities amounted to a million dollars or more. 

Most cities have, or ought to have, a foundling 
asylum, though often it bears a different name. The 
Roman Catholics seem to be wiser in this respect, and 
more careful to save infant life, than we of the Protes- 
tant faith. 



HENRY SHAW 



AND HIS BOTANICAL GARDEN. 



It is rare that a poor boy comes to America from a 
foreign land, with almost no money in his pocket, and 
leaves to his adopted town and State a million four 
hundred thousand dollars to beautify a city, to elevate 
its taste, and to help educate its people. 

Henry Shaw of St. Louis, Mo., was born in Sheffield, 
England, July 24, 1800. He was the oldest of four 
children, having had a brother who died in iufancy and 
two sisters. His father, Joseph Shaw, was a manufac- 
turer of grates, fire-irons, etc., at Sheffield. 

The boy obtained his early education at Thorne, a 
village not far from his native town, and used to get 
his lessons in an arbor, half hidden by vines, and sur- 
rounded by trees and flowers. From childhood he had 
a passion for a garden, and worked with his two little 
sisters in planting anemones and buttercups. 

From the school at Thorne the lad was transferred to 
Mill Hill, about twenty miles from London, to a "Dis- 
senting " school, the father being a Baptist. Here he 
studied for six years, Latin, French, and probably other 
languages, as he knew in later life German, Italian, and 
Spanish. He became especially fond of French litera- 
ture, and in manhood read and wrote French as easily 

247 



248 HENRY SHAW. 

and correctly as English. He was for a long time re- 
garded as the best mathematician in St. Louis. 

In 1818, when Henry was eighteen, he and the rest of 
the family came to Canada. The same year his father 
sent him to New Orleans to learn how to raise cotton ; 
but the climate did not please him, and he removed 
to a small French trading-post, called St. Louis, May 
3, 1819. 

The youth had a little stock of cutlery with him, 
the capital for which his uncle, Mr. James Hoole, had 
furnished. His nephew was always grateful for this 
kind act. He rented a room on the second floor of a 
building, and cooked, slept, ate, and sold his goods in 
this one room. He went out very little in the evening, 
preferring to read books, and sometimes played chess 
with a friend. It is thought that he rather avoided 
meeting yQiing ladies, as he perhaps naturally preferred 
to marry an English girl, when able to support her ; but 
when the fortune was earned he was wedded to his gar- 
dens, his flowers, and his books, so that he never married. 
The young man showed great energy in his hardware 
business, was very economical, honest, and always punc- 
tual. He had little patience with persons who were not 
prompt, and failed to keep an engagement. 

Though usually self-poised, possessing almost perfect 
control over a naturally quick temper, a gentleman re- 
lates that he once saw him angry because a man failed 
to keep an appointment; but Mr. Shaw regretted that 
he had allowed himself to speak sharply, and asked the 
offending person to dine with him. His head-gardener, 
Mr. James Gurney, from the Eoyal Botanical Garden in 
Regent's Park, London, said many years ago of Mr. 



HENRY SHAW, 249 

Shaw, " In twenty-three years I never heard him speak 
a harsh or an irritable word. No matter what went 
wrong, — and on such a place, and with so many men, 
things will go wrong occasionally, — he was always 
pleasant and cheerful, making the best of what could 
not be helped." 

Mr. Shaw gave close attention to business in the 
growing town of St. Louis, and in 1839, after he had 
been there twenty years, was astonished to find that his 
annual profits were $25,000. He said, " this was more 
money than any man in my circumstances ought to 
make in a single year ; " and he resolved to go out of 
business as soon as a good opportunity presented itself. 
This occurred the following year, in 1840 ; and at forty 
years of age, Mr. Shaw retired from business with a 
fortune of $250,000, equivalent to a million, probably, 
at the present day. 

After twenty years of constant labor he determined 
to take a little rest and change. In September, 1840, 
he went to Europe, stopping in KochesteiylSLY., where 
his parents and sisters then resided, and took his 
younger sister with him. 

He was absent two years, and coming home in 1842, 
soon arranged for another term of travel abroad. He 
remained in Europe three years, travelling in almost all 
places of interest, including Constantinople and Egypt. 
He kept journals, and wrote letters to friends, showing 
careful observation and wide reading. He made a third 
and last visit to Europe in 1851, to attend the first 
World's Eair, held in London. During this visit he 
conceived the plan of what eventually became his great 
gift. While walking through the beautiful grounds of 



250 HEX 11 Y SRA ir. 

Chatsworth, the magnificent home of the Duke of Dev- 
onshire, Mr. Shaw said to himself, " Why may not I 
have a garden too? I have enough land and money 
for something of the same sort in a smaller way." 

The old love for flowers and trees, as in boyhood, 
made the man in middle life determine to plant not 
so much for himself as for posterity. He had finished 
a home in the suburbs of St. Louis, Tower Grove, in 
1849 ; and another was in process of building in the city 
on the corner of Seventh and Locust Streets, when Mr. 
Shaw returned from Europe in 1851. 

For five or six years he beautified the grounds of his 
country home, and in 1857 commissioned Dr. Engel- 
niann, then in Europe, to examine botanical gardens 
and select proper books for a botanical library. Corre- 
spondence was begun with Sir William J. Hooker, the 
distinguished director of the famous Kew Gardens in 
London, our own beloved botanist, Professor Asa Gray 
of Harvard College, and others. Dr. Engelmann urged 
Mr. Shaw to purchase the large herbarium of the then 
recently deceased Professor Bernhardi of Erfurt, Ger- 
many, which was done, Hooker writing, " The State 
ought to feel that it owes you much for so much public 
spirit, and so well directed." 

March 14, 1859, Mr. Shaw secured from the State 
Legislature an Act enabling him to convey to trustees 
seven hundred and sixty acres of land, " in trust, upon 
a portion thereof to keep up, maintain, and establish a 
botanic garden for the cultivation and propagation of 
plants, flowers, fruit and forest trees, and for the dis- 
semination of the knowledge thereof among men, by 
having a collection thereof easily accessible ; and the 



HENRY SHAW. 251 

remaining portion to be used for the purpose of main- 
taining a perpetual fund for the support and mainte- 
nance of said garden, its care and increase, and the 
museum, library, and instruction connected therewith." 

For the next twenty-five years Mr. Shaw gave his 
time and strength to the development of his cherished 
garden and park. " He lived for them," says Mr. 
Thomas Dimmock, "and, as far as was practicable, in 
them ; walking or driving every day, when weather 
and health allowed, and permitting no work of impor- 
tance to go on without more or less of his personal 
inspection and direction. The late Dr. Asa Gray, than 
whom there can be no higher authority, once said, 
' This park and the Botanical Garden are the finest 
institutions of the kind in the country; in variety of 
foliage the park is unequalled.' " 

Once when Mr. Shaw was escorting a lady through his 
gardens, she said, " I cannot understand, sir, how you 
are able to remember all these different and difficult 
names." — " Madam," he replied, with a courtly bow, 
"did you ever know a mother who could forget the 
names of her children ? These plants and flowers are 
my children. How can I forget them ? " 

So devoted was Mr. Shaw to his work, that he did not 
go out of St. Louis for nearly twenty years, except for a 
drive to the neighboring village of Kirkwood to dine 
with a friend. 

Nine years after the garden had been established, in 
1866, Mr. Shaw began to create Tower Grove Park, of 
two hundred and seventy-six acres, planting from year 
to year over twenty thousand trees, all raised in the ar- 
boretum of the garden. Walks were gravelled, flower- 



252 HENRY SHAW. 

beds laid out, ornamental water provided, and artistic 
statues of heroic size, made by Baron von Mueller of 
Munich, of Shakespeare, Humboldt, and Columbus. The 
niece of Humboldt, who saw the statue of her uncle at 
Munich, wrote to Mr. Shaw, saying that " Europe had 
done nothing comparable to it for the great naturalist." 

Mr. Shaw used to say, when setting out these trees, 
that he was "planting them for posterity," as he did 
not expect to live to see them reach maturity. They 
were, however, of good size when he died in his nine- 
tieth year, Sunday, Aug. 25, 1889. 

"The death, peaceful and painless," says Mr. Dim- 
mock, " occurred in his favorite room on the second floor 
of the old homestead, by the window of which he sat 
nearly every night for more than thirty years until the 
morning hours, absorbed in the reading which had been 
the delight of his life. This room was always plainly 
furnished, containing only a brass bedstead, tables, 
chairs, and the few books he loved to have near him. 
The windows looked out upon the old garden which was 
the first botanical beginning at Tower Grove. 

" On Saturday, Aug. 31, after such ceremonial as St. 
Louis never before bestowed upon any deceased citizen, 
Henry Shaw was laid to rest in the mausoleum long pre- 
pared in the midst of the garden he had created — not 
for himself merely, but for the generations that shall 
come after him, and who, enjoying it, will ' rise up and 
call him blessed.' " 

Mr. Shaw was beloved by his workmen for his uniform 
kindness to them. Once when a young boy who was 
visiting him, and walking with him in the garden, passed 
a lame workman, and did not speak, although Mr. Shaw 



HENRY SHAW. 253 

said " Good-morning, Henry/' the courteous old gentle- 
man said, " Charles, yon did not speak to Henry. Go 
back and say * Good-morning ' to him." Mr. Shaw em- 
ployed many Bohemians, because he said, " They do not 
seem to be very popular with us, and I think I ought to 
help them all I can." 

Mr. Shaw was always simple in his tastes and eco- 
nomical in his habits. He drove his one-horse barouche 
till his friends, owing to his infirmities from increas- 
ing age, prevailed upon him to have a carriage and a 
driver. 

Four years before the death of Mr. Shaw he endowed 
a School of Botany as a department of Washington 
University, giving improved real estate yielding over 
$5,000 annually. He desired "to promote education 
and investigation in that science, and in its application 
to horticulture, arboriculture, medicine, and the arts, 
and for the exemplification of the Divine wisdom and 
goodness as manifested throughout the vegetable king- 
dom." 

Dr. Asa Gray had been deeply interested in this 
movement, and twice visited St. Louis to consult with 
Mr. Shaw. By the recommendation of Dr. Gray, Mr. 
William Trelease, Professor of Botany in Wisconsin 
University at Madison, a graduate of Cornell Univer- 
sity, and associated for some time with Professor Gray 
in various labors, was made Englemann Professor in 
the Henry Shaw School of Botany. 

Professor Trelease was also made director of the Mis- 
souri Botanical Garden, and has proved his fitness for 
the position by his high rank in scholarship, his contri- 
butions to literature, and his devotion to the work which 



254 HENRY SHAW. 

Mr. Shaw felt satisfaction in committing to his care. 
His courtesy as well as ability have won him many 
friends. Mr. Shaw left by will various legacies to 
relatives and institutions, his property, invested largely 
in land, having become worth over a million dollars. 
He gave to hospitals, several orphan asylums, Old 
Ladies' Home, Girls' Industrial Home, Young Men's 
Christian Association, etc., but by far the larger part to 
his beloved garden. He wished it to be open every day 
of the week to the public, except on Sundays and holi- 
days, the first Sunday in June and the first Sunday in 
September being exceptions to the rule. When the gar- 
den was opened the first Sunday of June, 1895, there 
were 20,159 visitors, and in September, though showery, 
15,500. 

Mr. Shaw bequeathed $1,000 annually for a banquet 
to the trustees of the garden, and literary and scientific 
men whom they choose to invite, thus to spread abroad 
the knowledge of the useful work the garden and 
schools of botany are doing ; also $400 for a banquet 
to the gardeners of the institution, with the florists, 
nurserymen, and market-gardeners of St. Louis and 
vicinity. Each year $500 is to be used in premiums at 
flower-shows, and $200 for an annual sermon " on the 
wisdom and goodness of God as shown in the growth 
of flowers, fruits, and other products of the vegetable 
kingdom." 

The Missouri Botanical Garden, Shaw's Garden as it 
is more commonly called, covering about forty-five acres, 
is situated on Tower Grove Avenue, about three miles 
southwest of the New Union Station. The former city 
residence of Mr. Shaw has been removed to the garden, 



HENRY SHAW. 255 

in which are the herbarium and library, with 12,000 vol- 
umes. The herbarium contains the large collection of 
the late Dr. George Engelmann, about 100,000 specimens 
of pressed plants ; and the general collection contains 
even more than this number of specimens from all parts 
of the world. The palms, the cacti, the tree-ferns, the 
fig-trees, etc., are of much interest. There is an obser- 
vatory in the centre of the garden ; and south of this, in 
a grove of shingle-oaks and sassafras-trees, is the mau- 
soleum of Henry Shaw, containing a life-like reclining 
marble statue of the founder of the garden, with a full- 
blown rose in his hand. 

During the past year several ponds have been made 
in the garden for the Victoria Regia, or Amazon water- 
lily, and other lilies. On the approach of winter, over a 
thousand plants are taken from the ground, potted, and 
distributed to charitable institutions and poor homes in 
the city. 

Much practical good has resulted from the great gift 
of Henry Shaw. According to his will, there are six 
scholarships provided for garden pupils. Three hundred 
dollars a year are given to each, with tuition free, and 
lodging in a comfortable house adjacent to the garden. 
So many persons have applied for instruction, that as 
many are received as can be taught conveniently, each 
paying $25 yearly tuition fee. 

The culture of flowers, small fruits, orchards, house- 
plants, etc., is taught; also landscape-gardening, drain- 
age, surveying, and kindred subjects. "It is safe to 
predict," says the Hon. Wm. T. Harris, Commissioner of 
Education, " that the future will see a large representa- 
tion of specialists resorting to St. Louis to pursue the 



256 HENRY SHAW. 

studies necessary for the promotion of agricultural 
industry." 

Dr. Trelease gives two courses of evening lectures at 
Washington University each year, and at the garden lie 
gives practical help to his learners. He investigates 
plant diseases and the remedies, and aids the fruit- 
grower, the florist, and the farmer, in the best methods 
with grasses, seeds, trees, etc. He deprecates the reck- 
less manner in which troublesome weeds are scattered 
from farm to farm Avith clover and grass seed. He and 
his assistants are making researches concerning plants, 
flowers, etc., which are published annually. 

The memory of Henry Shaw, " the first great patron 
of botanical science in America," is held in honor and 
esteem by the scientific world. The flowers and trees 
which he loved and found pleasure in cultivating, each 
year make thousands happier. 

Nature was to him a great teacher. In his garden, 
over a statue of " Victory," these words are engraved in 
stone : " Lord, how manifold are thy works : in wis- 
dom hast thou made them all." 

The seasons will come and go ; the flowers will bud 
and blossom year after year, and the trees spread out 
their branches : they will be a continual reminder of the 
white-haired man who planted them for the sake of 
doing good to others. 

Harvard College received a valuable gift May, 1861, 
through the munificence of the late Benjamin Bussey of 
Boxbury, Mass., in property estimated at $413,092.80, 
" for a course of instruction in practical agriculture, and 
the various arts subservient thereto." The superb es- 
tate is near Jamaica Plain. The students of the Bussey 



HEN BY SHAW. 257 

Institute generally intend to become gardeners, florists, 
landscape-gardeners, and farmers. The Arnold Arbore- 
tum occupies a portion of the Bussey farm in West Rox- 
bury. The fund given by the late James Arnold of 
New Bedford, Mass., for this purpose now amounts to 
$156,767.97. 



JAMES SMITHSON 



AND THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 



Another Englishman besides Henry Shaw to whom 
America is much indebted is James Smithson, the giver 
of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington. Born in 
1765 in France, he was the natural son of Hugh, third 
Duke of Northumberland, and Mrs. Elizabeth Macie, 
heiress of the Hungerfords of Audley, and niece of 
Charles, Duke of Somerset. 

At Pembroke College, Oxford, he was devoted to 
science, especially chemistry, and spent his vacations in 
collecting minerals. He was graduated May 26, 1786, 
and thereafter gave his time to study and original re- 
search. In 1790 he was elected a Eellow of the Royal 
Society, and became the friend of many distinguished 
men, both in England and on the Continent, where he 
lived much of the time. Among his friends and corre- 
spondents were Sir Humphry Davy, Berzelius (the noted 
chemist of Sweden), Gay-Lussac the chemist, Thomson, 
Wollaston, and others. 

He wrote and published in the Philosophical Tran- 
sactions of the Royal Society, and also in Thomson's 
Annals of Philosophy, many valuable papers on the 
"Composition of Zeolite," "On a Substance Procured 
from the Elm Tree, called Ulmine," " On a Saline 

258 




JAMES SMITHSON. 



JAMES SMITHSON. 259 

Substance from Mount Vesuvius," " On Facts Relating 
to the Coloring Matter of Vegetables," etc. At his 
death he left about two hundred manuscripts. He was 
deeply interested in geology, and made copious notes in 
his journal on rocks and mining. His life seems to 
have been a quiet one, devoted to intellectual pursuits. 

Professor Henry Carrington Bolton, in the Popular 
Science Monthly for January and February, 1896, re- 
lates this incident of Smithson : " It is said that he 
frequently narrated an anecdote of himself which illus- 
trated his remarkable skill in analyzing minute quanti- 
ties of substances, an ability which rivalled that of Dr. 
Wollaston. Happening to observe a tear gliding down 
a lady's cheek, he endeavored to catch it on a crystal 
vessel. One-half the tear-drop escaped ; but he sub- 
jected the other half to reagents, and detected what was 
then called microcosmic salt, muriate of soda, and some 
other saline constituents held in solution." 

When Mr. Smithson was over fifty years of age, in 
1818 or 1819, he had a misunderstanding with the Royal 
Society, owing to their refusal to publish one of his 
papers. It is said that prior to this he intended to 
leave all his wealth, over $500,000 to the society. 

About three years before his death, he made a brief 
will, giving the income of his fortune to his nephew, 
Henry James Hungerford, and the whole fortune to the 
children of his nephew, if he should marry. In case he 
did not marry, Smithson bequeathed the whole of his 
property " to the United States of America, to found at 
Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Insti- 
tution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion 
of knowledge among men." 



2 GO JAMES SMITH SON. 

Mr. Smithson, says Professor Simon Newcomb, "is 
not known to have had the personal acquaintance of an 
American, and his tastes were supposed to have been 
aristocratic rather than democratic. We thus have the 
curious spectacle of a retired English gentleman be- 
queathing the whole of his large fortune to our Govern- 
ment, to found an establishment which was described 
in ten words, without a memorandum of any kind by 
which his intentions could be divined, or the recipient 
of the gift guided in applying it." 

Mr. Smithson died June 27, 1829, in Genoa, Italy, at 
the age of sixty-four. His nephew survived him only 
six years, dying unmarried at Pisa, Italy, June 5, 1835. 
He used the income from his uncle's estate while he 
lived, and upon his death it passed to the United States. 
Hungerford's mother, who had married a Frenchman, 
Madame Theodore de la Batut, claimed a life-interest 
in the estate of Smithson, which was granted till her 
death in 1861. To meet this annuity $26,210 was re- 
tained in England until she died. 

Eor several years it was difficult to decide in what 
way Congress should use the money "for the increase 
and diffusion of knowledge among men." John Quincy 
Adams desired a great astronomical observatory ; Eufus 
Choate of Massachusetts urged a grand library ; a sen- 
ator from Ohio wished a botanical garden ; another per- 
son a college for women ; another a school for indigent 
children of the District of Columbia; still another a 
great agricultural school. 

After seven years of indecision and discussion the 
Smithsonian Institution was organized by act of Con- 
gress, Aug. 10, 1846, which provided for a suitable 



JAMES SMITHSON. 261 

building to contain objects of natural history, a chemi- 
cal - laboratory, a library, gallery of art, and geological 
and mineralogical collections. The minerals, books, and 
other property of James Smithson, were to be preserved 
in the Institution. 

Professor Joseph Henry, whose interesting life I have 
sketched in my "Famous Men of Science," was called 
to the headship of the new Institution. For thirty- 
three years he devoted his life to make Smithson's gift 
a blessing to the world and an honor to the name of 
the generous giver. The present secretary is the well- 
known Professor Samuel P. Langley. 

The library was after a time transferred to the Library 
of Congress, the art department to the Corcoran Art 
Gallery, and the Smithsonian Institution began to do 
its specific work of helping men to make original scien- 
tific research, to aid in explorations, and to send scien- 
tific publications all over the world. Its first publication 
was a work on the mounds and earthworks found in the 
Mississippi Valley. Much time has also been given to 
the study of the character and pursuits of the earliest 
races on this continent. 

The Smithsonian Institution now owns two large build- 
ings, one completed in 1855, costing about $314,000, 
and the great National Museum, which Congress helped 
to build. This building has a floor space of 100,000 
square feet, and contains over three and one-half mil- 
lion specimens of birds, fishes, Oriental antiquities, min- 
erals, fossils, etc. So much of value has been gathered 
by government surveys, as well as by contributions from 
other nations by way of exchange, that halls twice as 
large as those now built could be filled by the speci- 



262 JAMES SMITH SON. 

mens. So popular is the museum as a place to visit, 
that in the year ending June 30, 1893, over 300,000 
persons enjoyed its interesting accumulations. 

Correspondence is carried on with learned societies 
and men of science all over the world. The official list 
of correspondents is over 24,000. The transactions of 
learned societies and some other scientific works are 
exchanged with those abroad. The weight of matter 
sent abroad by the Smithsonian Institution at the end 
of the first decade was 14,000 pounds for 1857 ; at 
the end of the third decade 99,000 pounds for the year 
1877. The official documents of Congress, or by the 
government bureaus, are exchanged for similar works 
of foreign nations. In one year, 1892-1893, over 100 
tons of books were handled. 

The " Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge " now 
number over thirty volumes, and are valuable treatises 
on various branches of science. The scholarly William 
B. Taylor said these books " distributed over every 
portion of the civilized or colonized world constitute a 
monument to the memory of the founder, James Smith- 
son, such as never before was builded on the foundation 
of £100,000." 

The Smithsonian Institution has been a blessing in 
many ways. It organized a system of telegraphic mete- 
orology, and gave to the world "that most beneficent 
national application of modern sciences, — the storm 
warnings." 

In the year 1891 the Institution received valuable aid 
from Mr. Thomas G. Hodgkins of Setauket, N.Y., by 
the gift of 1200,000. The income from $100,000 is to 
be used in prizes for essays relating to atmospheric air. 



JAMES SMITHSON. 263 

Mr. Hodgkins, also an Englishman, died Nov. 25, 1892, 
nearly ninety years old. He gave $100,000 to the 
Royal Institution of Great Britain, and $50,000 each 
to the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children, 
and to Animals. He made his fortune, and having no 
family, spent it for " the diffusion of knowledge among 
men." - 

A very interesting feature was added to the work of 
the Smithsonian Institution in 1890, when Congress ap- 
propriated $200,000 for the purchase of land for the 
National Zoological Park. As no native wild animals 
in America seem safe from the cupidity of the trader, 
or the slaughter of the pleasure-loving sportsman, it 
became necessary to take measures for their preserva- 
tion. About 170 acres were purchased on Rock Creek, 
near Washington ; and there are already more than 500 
animals — bisons, etc. — in these picturesque grounds. 
These Avill be valuable object-lessons to the people, and 
help still further to carry out James Smithson's idea, 
" the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." 



PRATT, LENOX, MARY MACRAE STUART, 

NEWBERRY, CRERAR, ASTOR, 

REYNOLDS, 



AND THEIR LIBRARIES. 



ENOCH PRATT. 

Enoch Pratt was born in North Middleborough, 
Mass., Sept. 10, 1808. He graduated at Bridge water 
Academy when he was fifteen ; and a position was found 
for him in a leading house in Boston, where he remained 
until he was twenty-one years of age. He had written 
to a friend in Boston two weeks before his school 
closed, " I do not want to stay at home long after it is 
out." 

The eager, ambitious boy, with good habits, constant 
application to business, the strictest honesty, and good 
common-sense, soon made himself respected by his em- 
ployers and his acquaintances. 

He removed to Baltimore in 1831, when he was 
twenty-three years old, without a dollar at his com- 
mand, and established himself as a commission mer- 
chant. He founded the wholesale iron house of Pratt 
& Keith, and subsequently that of Enoch Pratt & 
Brother. " Prosperity soon followed," says the Hon. 
George Wm. Brown, "not rapidly but steadily, because 
it was based on those qualities of honesty, industry, 

264 



ENOCH PRATT. 265 

sagacity, and energy, which, mingled with thrift, al- 
though they cannot be said to insure success, are cer- 
tainly most likely to achieve it." 

Six years after coining to Baltimore, when he was 
twenty-nine years old, Mr. Pratt married Maria Louisa 
Hyde, Aug. 1, 1837. Her paternal ancestors were 
among the earliest settlers of Massachusetts ; her ma- 
ternal, a German family who settled in Baltimore over 
a century and a half ago. 

As years went by, and the unobtrusive, energetic man 
came to middle life, he was sought to fill various posi- 
tions of honor and trust in Baltimore. He was made 
director and president of a bank, which position he 
has held for over twoscore years, director and vice- 
president of railroads and steamboat lines, president of 
the House of Reformation at Cheltenham (for colored 
children), and of the Maryland School for the Deaf and 
Dumb at Frederick. He has also taken active inter- 
est in the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of 
the Mechanic Arts, and is treasurer of the Peabody 
Institute. 

For years he has been one of the finance commission- 
ers elected by the city council, without regard to his 
political belief, but on account of his ability as a finan- 
cier, and his wisdom. He is an active member of the 
Unitarian Church. 

For several years Mr. Pratt had thought about giving 
a free public library to the people of Baltimore. In 
1882, when he was seventy-four, Mr. Pratt gave to the 
city $1,058,000 for the establishing of his library, the 
building to cost about $225,000, and the remainder, a 
little over $833,000, to be invested by the city, which 



266 ENOCH PRATT. 

obligated itself to pay $50,000 yearly forever for the 
maintenance of the free library. Mr. Pratt also pro- 
vided for four branch libraries, which cost $50,000, 
located wisely in different parts of the city. 

The main library was opened Jan. 4, 1886, with ap- 
propriate ceremonies. The Romanesque building of 
Baltimore County white marble is 82 feet frontage, with 
a depth of 140 feet. A tower 98 feet high rises in the 
centre of the front. The floor of the vestibule is in 
black and white marble, and the wainscoting of Tennes- 
see and Vermont marbles, principally of a dove color. 
The reading-room in the second story is 75 feet long, 
37 feet wide, and 25 feet high. The walls are frescoed 
in buff and pale green tints, the wainscoting is of mar- 
ble, and the floor is inlaid with cherry, pine, and. oak. 
The main building will hold 250,000 volumes. 

The Romanesque branch libraries are 40 by 70 feet, 
one story in height, built of pressed brick laid with 
red mortar, with buff stone trimmings. The large read- 
ing-room in each is light and cheerful, and the book- 
room has shelving for 15,000 volumes. 

The librarian's report shows that in nine years, end- 
ing with Jan. 1. 1895, over 4,000,000 books have been 
circulated among the people of Baltimore. Over a half- 
million books are circulated each year. The library pos- 
sesses about 150,000 volumes. " The usefulness of the 
branch libraries cannot be stated in too strong terms," 
says the librarian, Mr. Bernard C. Steiner. Fifty-seven 
persons are employed in the library, — fourteen men 
and forty-three women. 

Mr. Pratt is now eighty-eight years old, and has not 
ceased to do good works. In 1865 he founded the Pratt 



JAMES LENOX. 267 

Free School at Middleborough, Mass., where he was 
born. Ex-Mayor James Hodges tells this incident of 
Mr. Pratt : " Some years ago he sold a farm in Virginia 
to a worthy but poor young man for $20,000. The 
purchaser had paid from time to time one-half the pur- 
chase money, when a series of bad seasons and failure 
of crops made it impossible to meet the subsequent 
payments. Mr. Pratt sent for him, and learned the 
facts. 

" After expressing sympathy for the young man's 
misfortunes, and encouraging him to persevere and hope, 
he cancelled his note for the balance due, — $ 10,000, — 
and handed him a valid deed for the property. Aston- 
ished and overwhelmed by this princely liberality, the 
recipient uttered a few words, and retired from his bene- 
factor's presence. Not until he had reached his Vir- 
ginia home was he able to find words to express his 
gratitude." 

The great gift of Enoch Pratt in his free library has 
stimulated like gifts all over the country ; and in his 
lifetime he is enjoying the fruits of his generosity. 

JAMES LENOX. 

The founder of Lenox Library on Seventy-second 
Street, overlooking Central Park, was born in New York 
City, Aug. 19, 1800, and died there Feb. 17, 1880. His 
father, Robert, was a wealthy Scotch merchant of New 
York, who left to his only son and seven daughters 
several million dollars. 

Robert purchased from the corporation of New York 
a farm of thirty acres of land in Fourth and Fifth 



268 JAMES LENOX. 

Avenues, near Seventy-second Street. For twelve acres 
on one side he gave $500, and for the rest on the other 
side, $10,700. He thought the land might "at no dis- 
tant day be the site of a village," and left it to his 
son on condition that it be kept from sale for several 
years. 

The son was educated at Princeton and Columbia 
Colleges, studied law, but, being devoted to literary 
matters, spent much time abroad in collecting valuable 
books and works of art. The only lady to whom he 
was ever attached, it is stated, refused him, and both 
remained, single. 

He was a quiet, retiring man, a member of the Pres- 
byterian Church, and a most generous giver, though his 
benefactions were kept from publicity as much as pos- 
sible. He once sent $7,000 to a lady for a deserving 
charity, and refused her second application because she 
had told of his former gift. 

He built Lenox Library of Lockport limestone, and 
gave to it $735,000 in cash, and ten city lots of great 
value, on which the building stands. The collection of 
books, marbles, pictures, etc., which he gave is valued 
at a million dollars. 

He gave probably a million in money and land to the 
Presbyterian Hospital, of which he was for many years 
the president. He was also president of the American 
Bible Society, to which he gave liberally. To the Pres- 
byterian Home for Aged Women he gave land assessed 
at $64,000. He gave to Princeton College and Theo- 
logical Seminary, to his own church, and to needy men 
of letters. 

After his death, his last surviving sister, Henrietta 



JAMES LENOX. 269 

Lenox, in 1887 gave to the library ten valuable adjoin- 
ing lots, and $100,000 for the purchase of books. 

The nephew of Mr. Lenox, Eobert Lenox Kennedy, 
who succeeded his uncle as president of the Board of 
Trustees of the library, presented to the institution, 
in 1879, Munkacsy's great picture of " Blind Milton 
dictating ' Paradise Lost ' to his Daughter." He died 
at sea, Sept. 14, 1887. 

The Lenox Library has a remarkable collection of 
works, which will always be an honor to America. Its 
early American newspapers bear dates from 1716 to 
1800, and include examples of nearly every important 
gazette of the Colonial and Kevolutionary times. The 
library received in 1894 over 45,000 papers. The Bos- 
ton Neivs Letter, the first regular newspaper printed in 
America, is an object of interest. Several of the news- 
papers appeared in mourning on account of the Stamp 
Act in October, 1765. 

The library has large collections in American history, 
Bibles, early educational books, and old English lite- 
rature. " The Souldier's Pocket Bible " is one of two 
known copies — the other being in the British Museum 
— of the famous pocket Bible used by Cromwell's sol- 
diers. Many of the Bibles are extremely rare, and of 
great value. There are five copies of Eliot's Indian 
Bible. There are 2,200 English Bibles from 1493, and 
1,200 Bibles in other languages. 

One of the oldest American publications in the library 
is " Spiritual Milk for Boston Babes in Either England," 
by John Cotton, B.D., in 1656. An old English work 
has this title : " The Boke of Magna Carta, with divers 
other statutes, etc., 1534 (Colophon :) Thus endyth the 



270 MART MACRAE STUART. 

boke called Magna Carta, translated out of Latyn and 
Frenshe into Englyshe by George Ferrers." 

There are several interesting books concerning witch- 
craft. The original book of testimony taken in the trial 
of Hugh Parsons for witchcraft at Springfield, in 1651, 
is mostly in the handwriting of William Pynchon, but 
with some entries by Secretary Edward Eawson. The 
library possesses the manuscript of Henry Harrisse's 
work on the " Discovery of America," forming ten folio 
volumes. The library of the Hon. George Bancroft was 
purchased by the Lenox Library in 1893. 

The Milton collection in the library contains about 
250 volumes, nearly every variety of the early editions. 
Several volumes have Milton's autograph and annota- 
tions. There are about 500 volumes of Bunyan's "Pil- 
grim's Progress," and books relating' to the writer, 
containing nearly 350 editions in many languages. 
There are also about 200 volumes of Spanish manu- 
scripts relating to America. The set of " Jesuit Rela- 
tions," the journals of the early Jesuit missionaries in 
this country, is the most complete in existence. 

Many thousands of persons come each year to see the 
books and pictures, as well as to read, and all are aided 
by the courteous librarian, Mr. Wilberforce Eames, who 
loves his work, and has the scholarship necessary for it. 

MARY MACRAE STUART, 

At her death in New York City, Dec. 30, 1891, gave 
the Robert L. Stuart fine-art collections valued at 
1500,000, her shells, minerals, and library, to the Lenox 
Library, on condition that they should never be exhib- 



WALTER L. NEWBE1UIY. 271 

ited on Sunday. To nine charitable institutions in 
New York she gave $5,000 each; to Cooper Union, 
$10,000; to the Cancer Hospital, $ 25,000 ; and about 
$5,000,000' to home and foreign missions of the Pres- 
byterian Church, hospitals, disabled ministers, freedmen, 
Church Extension Society, aged women, etc., of the same 
church, and also the Young Men's Christian Association, 
Woman's Hospital, Society for Prevention of Cruelty to 
Children, Society for Relief of Poor Widows with Small 
Children, City Mission and Tract Society, Bible Society, 
Colored Orphans, Juvenile Asylum, and other institu- 
tions in New York. 

Mrs. Stuart was the daughter of a wealthy New York 
merchant, Robert' Macrae, and married Robert L. Stuart, 
the head of the firm of sugar-refiners, R. L. & A. Stuart. 
Both brothers were rich, and gave away before Alexan- 
der's death a million and a half. Robert left an estate 
valued at $6,000,000 to his wife, as they had no chil- 
dren ; and she, in his behalf, gave away his fortune and 
also her own. She would have given largely to the 
Museum of Natural History and Museum of Art in New 
York, but from a fear that they would be opened to the 
public on Sundays. 

WALTER L. NEWBERRY. 

Chicago has been recently enriched by two great gifts, 
the Newberry and Crerar Libraries. Walter Loomis 
Newberry was born at East Windsor, Conn., Sept. 18, 
1804. He was educated at Clinton, N.Y., and fitted for 
the United States Military Academy, but could not pass 
the physical examination. After a time spent with his 



212 WALTER L. NEWBERRY. 

brother in commercial life in Buffalo, N.Y., he removed 
to Detroit in 1828, and engaged in the dry-goods busi- 
ness. He went to Chicago in 1834, when that city had 
but three thousand inhabitants, and became first a com- 
mission merchant, and later a banker. He invested 
some money which he brought with him in forty acres 
on the " North Side," which is now among the best resi- 
dence property in the city, and of course very valuable. 

Mr. Newberry helped to found the Merchants' Loan 
& Trust Companies' Bank, and was one of its directors. 
He was also the president of a railroad. 

He was always deeply interested in education ; was 
for many years on the school-board, and twice its chair- 
man. He was president of the Chicago Historical So- 
ciety, and was the first president of the Young Men's 
Library Association, which he helped to found. 

Mr. Newberry died at sea, Nov. 6, 1868, at the age of 
sixty-four, leaving about $5,000,000 to his wife and two 
daughters. 

If these children died unmarried, half the property 
was to go to his brothers and sisters, or their descen- 
dants, after the death of his wife, and half to the found- 
ing of a library. 

Both daughters died unmarried, — Mary Louisa on 
Feb. 18, 1874, at Pau, France ; and Julia Kosa on April 
4, 1876, at Borne, Italy. Mrs. Julia Butler Newberry, 
the wife, died at Paris, France, Dec. 9, 1885. 

The Newberry Library building, 300 feet by 60, of 
granite, is on the north side of Chicago, facing the little 
park known as Washington Square. . It is Spanish- 
Romanesque in style, and has room for 1,000,000 books. 
There will be space for 4,000,000 volumes when the 



WALTER L. NEWBERRY. 273 

other portions of the library are added. A most neces- 
sary part of the work of the trustees was the choosing 
of a librarian with ability and experience to form a use- 
ful reference library, which it was decided that the 
Newberry Library should be, the Public Library, with 
its annual income of over $70,000, seeming to meet the 
needs of the people at large. Dr. William Frederick 
Poole, for fourteen years the efficient librarian of the 
Chicago Public Library, was chosen librarian of the 
Newberry Library. 

Dictionaries, bibliographies, cyclopaedias, and the like, 
were at once purchased. The first gift made to the 
library was the Caxton Memorial Bible, presented Sept. 
29, 1877, by the Oxford University Press, through the 
late Henry Stevens, Esq., of London. The edition was 
limited to one hundred copies, and the copy presented 
to the Newberry Library is the ninety-eighth. Mr. 
George P. A. Healey, the distinguished artist, also gave 
about fifty of his valuable paintings to the library. 
Several thousand volumes on early American and local 
history, collected by Mr. Charles H. Guild of Somerville, 
Mass., were purchased by Dr. Poole for the library. A 
collection of 415 volumes of bound American news- 
papers, covering the period of the Civil War, 1861-1865, 
were procured. An extremely useful medical library 
has been given by Dr. Nicholas Senn, Professor of Sur- 
gery in Push Medical College. A valuable collection on 
fish, fish culture, and angling, made during forty years 
by the publisher, Robert Clarke of Cincinnati, has been 
bought for the library. A very interesting collection of 
early books and manuscripts was purchased from Mr. 
Henry Probasco of Cincinnati. The collection of Bibles 



274 WALTER L. NEWBERRY. 

is very rich ; also of Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Horace, 
and Petrarch. There were in 1895 over 125,600 vol- 
umes in the library, and over 30,000 pamphlets. 

To the great regret of scholars everywhere, Dr. Poole 
died March 1, 1894. Born in Salem, Mass., Dec. 24, 
1821, descended from an old English family, young 
Poole attended the common school in Dan vers till he 
was twelve, helped his father on the farm, and learned 
the tanner's trade. He loved his books, and his good 
mother determined that he should have an opportunity 
to go back to his studies. 

In 1842 he entered Yale College, at the close of the 
Freshman year, spent three years in teaching, and was 
graduated in 1849. While in college, he was appointed 
assistant librarian of his college society, the " Brothers 
in Unity," which had 10,000 volumes. He soon saw 
the necessity of an index for the bound sets of periodi- 
cals in the library, if they were to be of practical use, 
and began to make such an index. The little volume of 
one hundred and fifty-four pages appeared in 1848, and 
the edition was soon exhausted. A volume of five hun- 
dred and thirty-one pages appeared in 1853.; and "Poole's 
Index " at once secured fame for its author, both at 
home and abroad. 

Dr. Poole was the librarian of the Boston Athenaeum 
for thirteen years, and accepted a position in Chicago, 
October, 1873, to form the public library. In 1882 Dr. 
Poole issued the third edition of his famous " Index to 
Periodical Literature," having 1,469 pages. In this 
work he had the co-operation of the American Library 
Association, the Library Association of Great Britain 
and Ireland, and the able assistance of Win. I. Fletcher, 



JOHN CRERAR. 275 

M. A., librarian of Amherst College. Since Dr. Poole's 
death, Mr. Fletcher and Mr. R. R. Bowker have carried 
forward the Index, aided by many other librarians. 

Dr. Poole was president of the American Historical 
Society, 1887, of the American Library Association 
1886-1888, and had written much on historical and 
literary topics. The Boston Herald says, " Dr. Poole 
was a bibliographer of world-wide reputation, and one 
whose extended knowledge of books was simply wonder- 
ful." His " Index to Periodical Literature," invaluable 
to both writers and readers, will perpetuate his name. 
Dr. Poole was succeeded by the well-known author, Mr. 
John Vance Cheney, who had been eight years at the 
head of the San Francisco public library. 

JOHN CRERAR. 

Was born in New York City, the son of John Crerar, 
his parents both natives of Scotland. 

He was educated in a common school, and at the age 
of eighteen became a clerk in a mercantile house. In 
1862 he went to Chicago, and associated himself with 
J. McGregor Adams in the iron business. He was also 
interested in railroads, and was the president of a com- 
pany. He was an upright member of the Second Pres- 
byterian Church, and his first known gift was $10,000 
to that church. 

Unmarried, he lived quietly ^at the Grand Pacific 
Hotel until his death, Oct. 19, 1889. In his will he 
said, "I ask that I may be buried by the side of my 
honored mother, in Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, 
N.Y., in the family lot, and that some of my many 



276 JOHN CRERAR. 

friends see that this request is complied with. I desire 
a plain headstone, similar to that which marks my 
mother's grave, to be raised over my head." The in- 
come of $1,000 was left to care for the family lot. He 
left various legacies to relatives. To first cousins he 
gave $20,000 each; to second cousins, $10,000; and to 
third cousins, $5,000 each. To one second cousin, on 
account of kindness to his mother, an additional $10,- 
000 ; to the widow of a cousin, $10,000 for kindness to 
his only brother, Peter, then dead. To several other 
friends sums from $50,000 to $5,000 each. 

To his partner he gave $50,000, and the same to his 
junior partner. To his own church, $100,000, and a 
like amount to the missions of the church. To the 
church in New York to which his family formerly be- 
longed, and where he was baptized, $25,000. To the 
Chicago Orphan Asylum, the Chicago Nursery, the 
American Sunday-school Union, the Chicago Relief So- 
ciety, the Illinois Training-School for Nurses, the Chi- 
cago Manual Training-School, the Old People's Home, 
the Home for the Friendless, the Young Men's Chris- 
tian Association, each $50,000. 

To the Chicago Historical Society, the St. Luke's 
Free Hospital, and the Chicago Bible Society, each 
$25,000. To St. Andrew's Society of New York and 
of Chicago, each $10,000. To the Chicago Literary 
Club, $10,000. For a statue of Abraham Lincoln, 
$100,000. 

All the rest of the property, about three millions, was 
to be used for a free public library, to be called " The 
John Crerar Library," located on the South Side, inas- 
much as the Newberry was to be on the North Side. 



JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 'Ill 

Mr. Crerar said in his will, " I desire the books and 
periodicals selected with a view to create and sustain 
a healthy moral and Christian sentiment in the com- 
munity. I do not mean by this that there shall not be 
anything but hymn-books and sermons ; but I mean that 
dirty French novels, and all sceptical trash, and works 
of questionable moral tone, shall never be found in this 
library. I want its atmosphere that of Christian re- 
finement, and its aim and object the building up of 
character." 

Mr. Crerar was fond of reading the best books. His 
liberality and love of literature helped to bring Thack- 
eray to this country to lecture. 

Some of the cousins of Mr. Crerar tried to break the 
will on the grounds put forth for breaking Mr. Tilden's 
will, whereby New York City failed to receive five or 
six millions for a public library. Fortunately the courts 
accepted the plain intention of the giver, and the prop- 
erty is now devoted to the public good through a great 
library largely devoted to science. 

JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 

From the little village of Waldorf, near Heidelberg, 
Germany, came the head of the Astor family to 
America when he was twenty years old. Born July 17, 
1763, the fourth son of a butcher, he helped his father 
until he was sixteen, and then. determined to join an 
elder brother in London, who worked in the piano and 
flute factory of their uncle. 

Having no money, he set out on foot for the Ehine; 
and resting under a tree, he made this resolution, which 



278 JOIIN JACOB ASTOR. 

he always kept, " to be honest, industrious, and never 
gamble." Finding employment on a raft of timber, he 
earned enough money to procure a steerage passage from 
Holland to London, where he remained till 1783, helping 
his brother, and learning the English language. Having 
saved about seventy-five dollars at the end of three or 
four years, John Jacob invested about twenty-live in 
seven flutes, purchased a steerage ticket across the 
water for a like amount, and put about twenty-five 
in his pocket. 

On the journey over he met a furrier, who told him 
that money could be made in buying furs from the In- 
dians and men on the frontier, and selling them to large 
dealers. As soon as he reached New York, he entered 
the employ of a Quaker furrier, and learned all he could 
about the business, meantime selling his flutes, and using 
the money to buy furs from the Indians and hunters. 
He opened a little shop in New York for the sale of 
furs and musical instruments, walked nearly all over 
New York State in collecting his furs, and finally went 
back to London to sell his goods. 

He married, probably in 1786, Sarah Todd, who 
brought as her marriage portion $300, and what was 
better still, economy, energy, and a willingness to share 
her husband's constant labors. As fast as a little money 
was saved he invested it in land, having great faith in 
the future of New York City. He lived most simply 
in the same house where he carried on his business, and 
after fifteen years found himself the owner of $250,000. 

In 1809 he organized the American Fur Company, and 
established trade in furs with France, England, Ger- 
many, and Russia, and engaged in trade with China. 



JOHN JACOB ASTOB. 279 

He used to say in his old age, " The first hundred 
thousand dollars — that was hard to get; but afterward 
it was easy to make more." 

He died March 29, 1848, leaving a fortune estimated 
at $ 20,000,000, much of it the result of increased values 
of land, on which he had built houses for rent. By will 
Mr. Astor conveyed the large sum, at that time, of 
$400,000 to found a public library ; his friends, Wash- 
ington Irving, Dr. Joseph G. Cogswell, and Fitz-Greene 
Halleck, the poet, who was his secretary for seventeen 
years, having advised the gift of a library when he 
expressed a desire to do something helpful for the city 
of New York. He also left $50,000 for the benefit of 
the poor in his native town of Waldorf. 

John Jacob Astor's eldest son, and third of his seven 
children, William B. Astor, left and gave during his 
lifetime $550,000 to Astor Library. His estate of 
$45,000,000 was divided between his two sons, John 
Jacob and William. The son of John Jacob, William 
Waldorf Astor, a graduate of Columbia College, ex- 
minister to Italy, is a scholarly man, and the author 
of several books. The son of William Astor, John 
Jacob Astor, a graduate of Harvard, lives on Fifth 
Avenue, New York. He has also written one or more 
books. 

In 1879 John Jacob, the grandson of the first Astor 
in this country, a graduate of Columbia College, a stu- 
dent of the University of Gottingen, and a graduate of 
the Harvard Law School, erected a third structure for 
the library similar to those built by his father and 
grandfather, and gave in all $850,000 to Astor Library. 
The entire building now has a frontage of two hundred 



280 JOHN JACOB ASTOR. 

feet, with a depth of one hundred feet. It is of brown- 
stone and brick, and is Byzantine in style of architec- 
ture. In 1893 its total number of volumes was 245,349. 

Astor Library possesses some very rare and valuable 
books. "Here is one of the very few extant copies of 
Wyckliffe's translation of the New Testament in manu- 
script," writes Frederick K. Saunders, the librarian, in 
the New England Magazine for April, 1890, "so closely 
resembling black-letter type as almost to deceive even a 
practised eye. It is enriched with illuminated capitals, 
and its supposed date is 1390. It is said to have been 
once the property of Duke Humphrey. There is an 
Ethiopic manuscript on vellum, the service book of an 
Abyssinian convent at Jerusalem. There are two richly 
illuminated Persian manuscripts on vellum which once 
belonged to the library of the Mogul Emperors of Delhi ; 
also two exquisitely illuminated missals or books of 
Hours, the gift of the late Mr. J. J. Astor. One of the 
glories of the collection is the splendid Salisbury Missal, 
written with wonderful skill, and profusely emblazoned 
with burnished gold. Here also may be found the 
second printed Bible, on vellum, folio, 1462, which cost 
$9,000." 

Mrs. Astor gave a valuable collection of autographs 
of eminent persons ; and the family also gave " a mag- 
nificent manuscript written with liquid gold, on purple 
vellum, entitled ' Evangelistarium,' of almost unrivalled 
beauty, but no less remarkable for its great age, the 
date being a.d. 870. This is probably the oldest book 
in America." Ptolemy's Geography is represented by 
fifteen editions, the earliest printed in 1478. 

John Jacob Astor, the grandson of the first John 



MORTIMER FABRICIUS REYNOLDS. 281 

Jacob, died in New York, Feb. 22, 1890. He presented 
to Trinity Church the reredos and altar, costing $80,000, 
as a memorial of his father, William B. Astor. Through 
his wife, who was a Miss Gibbs of South Carolina, he 
virtually built the New York Cancer Hospital, and gave 
largely to the Woman's Hospital. He gave $100,000 
to St. Luke's Hospital, $50,000 to the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art, with his wife's superb collection of 
laces after her death in 1887. The paintings of John 
Jacob Astor costing $75,000 were presented to Astor 
Library by his son, William Waldorf Astor, after his 
father's death. 

MORTIMER FABRICIUS REYNOLDS. 

" On the 2d of December, 1814, there was born, in the 
narrow clearing that skirted the ford of the Genesee 
River, the first child of white parents to see the light 
upon that ' Hundred-Acre Tract ' which was the primi- 
tive site of the present city of Rochester. Mortimer 
Fabricius Reynolds was the name given, for family 
reasons, to the first-born of this backwoods settle- 
ment." Thus states the " Semi-Centennial History of 
the City of Rochester, N.Y.," published in 1888. 

This boy, grown to manhood and engaged in com- 
merce, was the sole survivor of the six children of his 
father, Abelard Reynolds. He was proud of the family 
name ; but " his childlessness, and the consciousness that 
with him the name was to be extinct, had come to weigh 
with a painful gravity." Abelard Reynolds had made 
a fortune from the increase in land values, and both he 
and his son William had interested themselves deeply in 



282 MORTIMER FABRICIUS REYNOLDS. 

the intellectual and moral advance of the community in 
which they lived. 

Mortimer F. Reynolds desired to leave a memorial of 
his father, of his brother, William Abelard Reynolds, 
and of himself. He wisely chose to found a library, 
that the name might be forever remembered. He died 
June 13, 1892, leaving nearly one million to found and 
endow the Reynolds Library of Rochester, N.Y., Alfred 
S. Collins, librarian. 

It is stated in the press that President Seth Low of 
Columbia College has given over a million dollars for 
the new library in connection with that college. 

In "Public Libraries of America," page 144, a most 
useful book by William I. Fletcher, librarian of Amherst 
College, may be found a suggestive list of the principal 
gifts to libraries in the United States. Among the 
larger bequests are Dr. James Rush, Philadelphia, 
$1,500,000; Henry Hall, St. Paul, Minn., $500,000; 
Charles E. Forbes, Northampton, Mass., $220,000 ; Mr. 
and Mrs. Converse, Maiden, Mass., $125,000 ; Hiram 
Kelley, Chicago, to public library, $200,000 ; Silas Bron- 
son, Waterbury, Conn., $200,000 ; Dr. Kirby Spencer, 
Minneapolis, Minn., $200,000; Mrs. Maria C. Bobbins 
of Brooklyn, N. Y., to her former home, Arlington, Mass., 
for public library building and furnishing, $150,000. 



FREDERICK H. RINDGE 



AND HIS GIFTS. 



Mr. Rindge, born in Cambridge, Mass., in 1857, but 
at present residing in California, has given his native 
city a public library, a city hall, a manual training- 
school, and a valuable site for a high school. 

The handsome library, Romanesque in style, of gray 
stone with brown stone trimmings, was opened to the 
public in 1889. One room of especial interest on the 
first floor contains war relics, manuscripts, autographs 
and pictures of distinguished persons, and literary and 
historical matter connected with the history of Cam- 
bridge. The European note-book of Margaret Fuller is 
seen here, the lock, key, and hinges of the old Holmes 
mansion, removed to make way for the Law School, etc. 

The library has six local stations where books may be 
ordered by filling out a slip ; and these orders are gath- 
ered up three times a day, and books are sent to these 
stations the same day. 

The City Hall, a large building also of gray stone with 
brown stone trimmings, is similar to the old town halls 
of Brussels, Bruges, and others of mediaeval times. Its 
high tower can be seen at a great distance. 

The other important gift to Cambridge from Mr. 
Rindge is a manual training-school for boys. Ground 

283 



284 FREDERICK II. IIIXDGE. 

was broken for this school in the middle of July, 1888, 
and pupils were received in September. The boys work 
in wood, iron, blacksmithing, drawing, etc. The system 
is similar to that adopted by Professor Woodward at St. 
Louis. The boys, to protect their clothes, wear outer 
suits of dark brown and black duck, and round paper 
caps. 

The fire-drill is especially interesting to strangers. 
Hose-carriages and ladders are kept in the building, 
and the boys can put streams of water to the top in 
a very brief time. Mr. Rindge supports the school. 
The instruction is free, and is a part of the public- 
school work. The pupils may take in the English High 
School a course of pure head-work, or part head-work 
and part hand-work. If they elect the latter, they drop 
one study, and in its place take three hours a day in 
manual training. The course covers three years. 

Mr. Rindge inherited his wealth largely from his 
father. He made these gifts when he was twenty-nine 
years of age. Being an earnest Christian, he made it a 
condition of his gifts that verses of Scripture and max- 
ims of conduct should be inscribed upon the walls of 
the various buildings. These are found on the library 
building ; and the inscription on the City Hall reads as 
follows : " God has given commandments unto men. 
From these commandments men have framed laws by 
which to be governed. It is honorable and praise- 
worthy to faithfully serve the people by helping to 
administer these laws. If the laws are not enforced, 
the people are not well governed." 



ANTHONY J. DREXEL 



AND HIS INSTITUTE. 



The Drexel family, like a majority of the successful 
and useful families in this country, began poor. An- 
thony J. Drexel's father, Francis Martin Drexel, was 
born at Dornbirn, in the Austrian Tyrol, April 7, 1792. 
When he was eleven years old, his father, a merchant, 
sent him to a school near Milan. Later, when there was 
a war with France, he was obliged to go to Switzer- 
land to avoid conscription. 

He earned a scanty living at whatever he could find 
to do, but his chief work and pleasure was in portrait 
painting. When he was twenty-five, in 1817, he de- 
termined to try his fortune in the New World, and 
reached the United States after a voyage of seventy-two 
days. 

He settled in Philadelphia as an artist, with probably 
little expectation of any future wealth. After nine 
years of work he went to Peru, Chili, and Mexico, and 
seems to have had good success in painting the portraits 
of noted people, General Simon Bolivar among them. 

Returning to Philadelphia, he surprised his acquaint- 
ances by starting a bank in 1837. There were fears of 
failure from what seemed an inadequate capital and 
lack of knowledge of business ; but Mr. Drexel was eco- 

285 



286 ANTHONY J. DREXEL. 

nomical, strictly honest, energetic, and devoted to his 
work. 

He opened a little office in Third Street, and placed 
his son Anthony, born Sept. 13, 1826, in the small bank. 
" While waiting on customers," says Harper's Weekly, 
" the boy was in the habit of eating his cold dinner 
from a basket under the counter." He was but a lad of 
thirteen, yet he soon showed a special fitness for the 
place by his quickness and good sense. 

The bank grew in patrons, in reputation, and in 
wealth ; and when Prancis Drexel died, June 5, 1863, he 
had long been a millionnaire, had retired from business, 
and left the bank to the management of his sons. 

Besides the bank in Philadelphia, branch houses were 
formed in New York, Paris, and London. " As a man 
of affairs," wrote his very intimate friend, George W. 
Childs, " no one has ever spoken ill of Anthony J. 
Drexel ; and he spoke ill of no one. He did not drive 
sharp bargains ; he did not profit by the hard necessi- 
ties of others ; he did not exact from those in his em- 
ploy excessive tasks and give them inadequate pay. 
He was a lenient, patient, liberal creditor, a generous 
employer, considerate of and sympathetic with every 
one who worked for him. . . . 

" He was a devoted husband, a loving parent, a true 
friend, a generous host, and in all his domestic relations 
considerate, just, and kind. His manners were finely 
courteous, manly, gentle, and refined. His mind was as 
pure as a child's ; and during all the years of our close 
companionship I never knew him to speak a word that 
he might not have freely spoken in the presence of his 
own children. His religion was as deep as his nature, 




ANTHONY J. DREXEL. 



ANTHONY J. DREXEL. 287 

and rested upon the enduring foundations of faith, hope, 
and charity. 

" He observed always a strict simplicity of living ; he 
walked daily to and from his place of business, which 
was nearly three miles distant from his home. I was 
his companion for the greater part of the way every 
morning in these long walks ; and as he passed up and 
down Chestnut Street, he was wont to salute in his cor- 
dial, pleasant, friendly manner, large numbers of all 
sorts and conditions of people. His smile was espe- 
cially bright and attractive, and his voice low and 
sweet." 

Mr. Drexel inherited his father's artistic tastes, and in 
his home at West Philadelphia, and at his country place, 
" Runnymede," near Lansdowne, he had many beautiful 
works of art, statuary, books, paintings, bronzes, and 
the like. He was also especially fond of music. 

He was a great friend of General Grant, and Dec. 19, 
1879, gave him and Mrs. Grant a notable reception with 
about seven hundred prominent guests. He was one of 
the pall-bearers at Grant's funeral in 1885. 

Mr. Drexel was always a generous giver. He was a 
large contributor to the University of Pennsylvania, to 
hospitals, to churches of all denominations, and to asy- 
lums. With Mr. Child s and others he built an Episco- 
pal church at Elberon, Long Branch, where he usually 
went in the summer. 

His largest and best gift, for which he will be remem- 
bered, is that of about three million dollars to found and 
endow Drexel Institute, erected in his lifetime. He 
wished to fit young men and Avomen to earn their liv- 
ing ; and after making a careful examination of Cooper 



288 ANTHONY J. DBEXEL. 

Institute, New York, and Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, and 
sending abroad to learn the best methods and plan of 
buildings for such industrial education, he began his 
own admirable Drexel Institute of Art, Science, and 
Industry in West Philadelphia. He erected the hand- 
some building of light buff brick with terra-cotta trim- 
mings, at the corner of Thirty-second and Chestnut 
Streets, at a cost of $550,000, and then gave an endow- 
ment of $1,000,000. At various times he gave to the 
library, museum, etc., over $600,000. 

The Institute was dedicated on the afternoon of 
Dec. 17, 1891, Chauncey M. Depew making the dedica- 
tion address, and was opened to students Jan. 4, 1892. 
James MacAlister, LL.D., superintendent of the public 
schools of Philadelphia, a man of fine scholarship, great 
energy, and enthusiastic love for the work of education, 
was chosen as the president. 

Prom the first the school has been filled with eager 
students in the various departments. The art depart- 
ment gives instruction in painting, modelling, architec- 
ture, design and decoration, wood-carving, etc. ; the 
department of science and technology, courses in mathe- 
matics, chemistry, physics, machine construction, and 
electrical engineering ; the department of mechanic arts, 
shopwork in wood and iron with essential English 
branches ; the business department, commercial law, 
stenography, and typewriting, etc. ; the department of 
domestic science and arts gives courses in cooking, 
dressmaking, and millinery. There are also courses in 
physical training, in music, library work, and evening 
classes open five nights in the week from October to 
April. 



ANTHONY J. DREXEL. 289 

The Institute was attended by more than 2,700 stu- 
dents in 1893-1894; and 35,000 persons attended the 
free public lectures in art, science, technology, etc., and 
free concerts, chiefly organ recitals, weekly, during the 
winter months. 

The Institute has been fortunate in its gifts from 
friends. Mr. George W. Childs gave to it his rare and 
valuable collection of manuscripts and autographs, fine 
engravings, ivories, books on art, etc. ; Mrs. John E. 
Fell, a daughter of Mr. Drexel, a collection of ancient 
jewellery and rare old clocks ; Mrs. James W. Paul, an- 
other daughter of Mr. Drexel, $10,000 as a memorial 
of her mother, to be used in the purchase of articles 
for the museum ; while other members of the family 
have given bronzes, metal-work, and unique and useful 
gifts. 

Mr. Drexel lived to see his Institute doing its noble 
work. So interested was he that he stopped daily as 
he went to the bank to see the young people at their 
duties. He was greatly interested in the evening 
classes. "This part of the work," says Dr. MacAl- 
ister, "he watched with great eagerness, and he was 
specially desirous that young people who were com- 
pelled to work through the day should have opportuni- 
ties in the evening equal to those who took the regular 
daily work of the Institution." 

Mr. Drexel died suddenly, June 30, 1893, about two 
years after the building of the Institute, from apo- 
plexy, at Carlsbad, Germany. He had gone to Europe 
for his health, as was his custom yearly, and seemed 
about as well as usual until the stroke came. Two 
weeks before he had had a mild attack of pleurisy, but 



290 ANTHONY J. DUE X EL. 

would not permit his family to be told of it, thinking 
that he would fully recover. 

Mr. Drexel left behind him the memory of a modest, 
unassuming man ; so able a financier that he was asked 
to accept the position of Secretary of the Treasury of 
the United States, but declined ; so generous a giver, 
that he built his monument before his death in his j 
elegant and helpful Institute, an honor to his native 
city, Philadelphia, and an honor to his family 



PHILIP D. ARMOUR 



AND HIS INSTITUTE. 



Philip D. Armour was born in Stockbridge, Madi- 
son County, N.Y., and spent his early life on a farm. 
In 1852, when he was twenty years of age, he went to 
California, and finally settled in Chicago, where he has 
become very wealthy by dealing in packed meat, which 
is sent to almost every corner of the earth. 

"He pays six or seven millions of dollars yearly in 
wages," writes Arthur Warren in an interesting article 
in McClure's Magazine, February, 1894, "owns four 
thousand railway cars, which are used in transporting 
his goods, and has seven or eight hundred horses to 
haul his wagons. Fifty or sixty thousand persons re- 
ceive direct support from the wages paid in his meat- 
packing business alone, if we estimate families on the 
census basis. He is a larger owner of grain-elevators 
than any other individual in either hemisphere ; he is 
the proprietor of a glue factory, which turns out a 
product of seven millions of tons a year ; and he is 
actively interested in an important railway enterprise." 

He manages his business with great system, and 
knows from his heads of departments, some of whom 
he pays a salary of $25,000 yearly, what takes place 
from day to day in his various works. He is a quiet, 

291 



292 PITTLTP I). ARMOUR. 

self-centred man, a good listener, has excellent judg- 
ment, and possesses untiring energy. 

" All my life," he says, " I have been up with the 
sun. The habit is as easy at sixty-one as it was at 
sixteen ; perhaps easier, because I am hardened to it. 
I have my breakfast at half-past five or six ; I walk 
down town to my office, and am there by seven, and 
I know what is going on in the world without having 
to wait for others to come and tell me. At noon I 
have a simple luncheon of bread and milk, and after 
that, usually, a short nap, which freshens me again for 
the afternoon's work. I am in bed again at nine o'clock 
every night." 

Mr. Armour thinks there are as great and as many 
opportunities for men to succeed in life as there ever 
have been. He said to Mr. Warren : " There was never 
a better time than the present, and the future will bring 
even greater opportunities than the past. Wealth, capi- 
tal, can do nothing without brains to direct it. It will 
be as true in the future as it is in the present that 
brains make capital — capital does not make brains. 
The world does not stand still. Changes come quicker 
now than they ever did, and they will come quicker 
and quicker. New ideas, new inventions, new methods 
of manufacture, of transportation, new ways to do 
almost everything, will be found as the world grows 
older ; and the men who anticipate them, and who are 
ready for them, will find advantages as great as any 
their fathers or grandfathers have had." 

Mr. Frank G. Carpenter, the well-known journalist, 
relates this incident of Mr. Armour : — 

"He is a good judge of men, and he usuall3 T puts the 




PHILIP D. ARMOUR, 



PHILIP D. ARMOUR. 293 

right man in the right place. I am told that he never 
discharges a man if he can help it. If the man is not 
efficient he gives instructions to have him put in some 
other department, but to keep him if possible. There 
are certain things, however, which he will not tolerate ; 
and among these are laziness, intemperance, and getting 
into debt. As to the last, he says he believes in good 
wages, and that he pays the best. He tells his men 
that if they are not able to live on the wages he pays 
them he does not want them to work for him. Not 
long ago he met a policeman in his office. 

" ' What are you doing here, sir ? ' he asked. 

" ' I am here to serve a paper/ was the reply. 

" ' What kind of a paper ? ' asked Mr. Armour. 

" ' I want to garnishee one of your men's wages for 
debt/ said the policeman. 

" ' Indeed/ replied Mr. Armour ; < and who is the 
man ? ' He thereupon asked the policeman into his 
private office, and ordered the debtor to come in. He 
then asked the clerk how long he had been in debt. 
The man replied that for twenty years he had been 
behind, and that he could not catch up. 

" i But you get a good salary/ said Mr. Armour, 
' don't you?' 

" < Yes/ said the clerk ; c but I can't get out of debt. 
My life is such that somehow or other I can't get out.' 

" ' But you must get out/ said Mr. Armour, l or you 
must leave here. How much do you owe ? ' 

" The clerk then gave the amount. It was less than 
$1,000. Mr. Armour took his check-book, and wrote 
out an order for the amount. ' There/ he said, as he 
handed the clerk the check, 'there is enough to pay 



294 PHILIP D. ARMOUR. 

all your debts. Now I want you to keep out of debt, 
and if I hear of your getting into debt again you will 
have to leave.' 

"The man took the check. He did pay his debts, 
and remodelled his life on a cash basis. About a year 
after the above incident happened he came to Mr. 
Armour, and told him that he had had a place offered 
him at a higher salary, and that he was going to leave. 
He thanked Mr. Armour, and told him that his last 
year had been the happiest of his life, and that getting 
out of debt had made a new man of him." 

When Mr. Armour was asked by Mr. Carpenter to 
what he attributed his great success, he replied : — 

" I think that thrift and economy have had much to 
do with it. I owe much to my mother's training, and 
to a good line of Scotch ancestors, who have always 
been thrifty and economical." 

Mr. Armour has not been content to spend his life in 
amassing wealth only. After the late Joseph Armour 
bequeathed a fund to establish Armour Mission, Philip 
D. Armour doubled the fund, or more than doubled it; 
and now the Mission has nearly two thousand children 
in its Sunday-school, with free kindergarten and free dis- 
pensary. Mr. Armour goes to the Mission every Sunday 
afternoon, and finds great happiness among the children. 

To yield a revenue yearly for the Mission, Mr. Armour 
built " Armour Flats," a great building adjoining the 
Mission, with a large grass-plot in the centre, where in 
two hundred and thirteen flats, having each from six to 
seven room, families can find clean and attractive homes, 
with a rental of from seventeen to thirty-five dollars a 
month. 



PHILIP D. ARMOUR. 295 

" There is an endowed work," says Mr. Armour, 
" that cannot be altered by death, or by misunderstand- 
ings among trustees, or by bickerings of any kind. Be- 
sides, a man can do something to carry out his ideas 
while he lives, but he can't do so after he is in the 
grave. Build pleasant homes for people of small in- 
comes, and they will leave their ugly surroundings, and 
lead brighter lives." 

Mr. Armour, aside from many private charities, has 
given over a million and a half dollars to the Armour 
Institute of Technology. The five-story fire-proof build- 
ing of red brick trimmed with brown stone was finished 
Dec. 6, 1892, on the corner of Thirty-third Street and 
Armour Avenue ; and the keys were put in the hands of 
the able and eloquent preacher, Dr. Frank W. Gunsaulus, 
" to formulate," says the Chicago Tribune, Oct. 15, 1893, 
" more exactly than Mr. Armour had done the lines on 
which this work was to go forward. Dr. Gunsaulus 
had long ago reached the conclusion that the best way 
to prepare men for a home in heaven is to make it 
decently comfortable for them here." 

Dr. Gunsaulus put his heart and energy into this 
noble work. The academic department prepares stu- 
dents to enter any college in the country ; the technical 
department gives courses in mechanical engineering, 
electricity, and electrical engineering, mining engineer- 
ing, and metallurgy. The department of domestic arts 
offers instruction in cooking, dressmaking, millinery, 
etc. ; the department of commerce fits persons for a 
business life, wisely combining with its course in short- 
hand and typewriting such a knowledge of the English 
language, history, and some modern languages, as will 



296 rillLIP D. ARMOUR. 

make the students do intelligent work for authors, law- 
yers, and educated people in general. 

Special attention has been given to the gymnasium, 
that health may be fully attended to. Mr. Armour has 
spared neither pains nor expense to provide the best 
machinery, especially for electrical work. " In a few 
years," he says, " we shall be doing everything by elec- 
tricity. Before long our steam-engines will be as old- 
fashioned as the windmills are now." 

Dr. Gunsaulus has taken great pleasure in gathering 
books, prints, etc., for the library, which already has 
a choice collection of works on the early history of 
printing. 

The Institute was opened in September, 1893, with 
six hundred pupils, and has been most useful and suc- 
cessful from the first. 



LEONARD CASE 



AND THE SCHOOL OF APfLIED SCIENCE. 



Technological schools are springing up so rapidly 
all over our country that it would be impossible to name 
them all. The Stevens Institute of Technology at Hobo- 
ken, N. J., was organized in 1871, with a gift of $650,000 ; 
the Towne Scientific School, Philadelphia, 1872, $1,000,- 
000 ; the Miller School, Batesville, Va., 1878, $1,000,000 ; 
the Rose Polytechnic, Terre Haute, Ind., 1883, over 
$500,000 ; the Case School of Applied Science of Cleve- 
land, Ohio, 1881, over $2,000,000. 

Leonard Case, the giver of the Case School and the 
Case Library, born June 27, 1820, was a quiet, scholarly 
man, who gave wisely the wealth amassed by his father. 
The family on the paternal side came from Holland ; on 
the maternal side from Germany. Mr. James D. Cleve- 
land, in a recent sketch of the founder of Case School, 
gives an interesting account of the ancestors of Mr. Case. 

The great-grandfather of Leonard Case, Leonard Eck- 
stein, when a youth, had a quarrel with the Catholic 
clergy in Nuremberg, near which^city he was born, and 
was in consequence thrown into prison, where he nearly 
starved. One day his sister brought him a cake which 
contained a slender silk cord baked in it. This cord 
was let down from his cell window to a friend, who 

297 



298 LEONARD CASE. 

fastened it to a rope which, when drawn up, enabled the 
young man to slide down a wall eighty feet above the 
ground. 

After his escape, the youth of nineteen came to Amer- 
ica, and landed in Philadelphia without a cent of money. 
Later he married and moved to Western Pennsylvania ; 
and his daughter Magdalene married Meshach Case, the 
grandfather of Leonard Case. 

Meschach was an invalid from asthma. In 1799 he 
and his wife came on horseback to explore Ohio, and 
perhaps make a home. They bought two hundred acres 
of the wilderness in the township of Warren, built a log 
cabin, and cleared an acre of timber around it. The 
following year others came to settle, and all celebrated 
the Fourth of July with instruments made on the 
grounds. Their drum was a piece of hollow pepperidge- 
tree with a fawn's skin stretched over it, and a fife was 
made from an elder stem. 

The eldest son, Leonard, who was a hard worker from 
a child, at seven cutting wood for the fires, at ten thrash- 
ing grain, at fourteen ploughing and harvesting, took 
cold when heated, and became ill for two years and a 
cripple for the rest of his life, using crutches as he 
walked. Early in life, when it was the fashion to use 
intoxicating liquors, Leonard made a pledge never to 
use them, and was a total abstainer as long as he lived, 
thus setting a noble example to the growing community. 

Determined to have an education, he invented some 
instruments for drafting, bottomed all the chairs in the 
neighborhood, made sieves for the farmers, and thus 
earned a little money for books. As his handwriting 
was good, he was made clerk of the little court at 



LEONARD CASE. 299 

Warren, and later of the Supreme Court for Trumbull 
County, where he had an opportunity to study, and copy 
the records of the Connecticut Land Company. 

A friend advised him to study law, and furnished 
him with books, which advice he followed. Later, in 
1816, he moved to Cleveland, and was made cashier of 
a bank just organized. He was a man of public spirit, 
suggested the planting of trees which have made Cleve- 
land known as the Forest City, was sent to the Legisla- 
ture, and finally became president of a bank, as well as 
land agent of the Connecticut Land Company. He was 
universally respected and esteemed. 

The hard-working invalid had become rich through 
increase in value of the large amount of land which he 
had purchased. He died Dec. 7, 1864, seven years after 
his wife's death, and two years after the death of his 
very promising son William, of consumption. The latter 
was deeply interested in natural history, and in 1859 had 
begun to erect a building for the Young Men's Library 
Association and the Kirtland Society of Natural History. 
This project his surviving brother, Leonard, carried out. 

After the death of father, mother, and brother, Leo- 
nard Case was left to inherit the property. He had 
graduated at Yale College in 1842, and was admitted to 
the bar in 1844. He, however, devoted himself to lite- 
rary pursuits, and travelled extensively over this country 
and abroad. 

Ill health in later years increased his natural reti- 
cence and dislike of publicity. He gave generously 
where he became interested. To the Library Associa- 
tion he first gave $20,000. In 1876 he gave Case Build- 
ing and grounds, then valued at $ 225,000, to the Library 



300 LEONARD CASE. 

Association. It is now worth over half a million dol- 
lars, and furnishes a good income for its library of over 
40,000 volumes. Under the excellent management of 
M v. Charles Orr, the librarian, the building has been 
remodelled, and the library much enlarged. The mem- 
bership fee is one dollar annually. 

The same year, 1876, Mr. Case determined to carry 
out his plan of a School of Applied Science. He corre- 
sponded with various eminent men ; and on Feb. 24, 1877, 
after gifts to his father's relatives, he conveyed his 
property to trustees for a school where should be taught 
mathematics, physics, mechanical and civil engineering, 
chemistry, mining and metallurgy, natural history, mod- 
ern languages, etc., to fit young men for practical work 
in life. 

" How well this foresight was inspired," says Mr. 
Cleveland, " is shown in the great demand by the city 
and country at large for the men who have received 
training at the Case School. Hundreds are called for by 
iron, steel, and chemical works, here and elsewhere, to 
act in laboratories or in direction of important engineer- 
ing, in mines, railroads, construction of docks, water- 
works, electrical projects, and architecture. Nearly 
forty new professions have been opened to the youth of 
Cleveland, which were unavailable before this school 
was founded." 

Cady Staley, Ph.D. LL.D., is the president of Case 
School, which has an able corps of professors. There 
are nearly 250 students in the institution. 

Leonard Case died Jan. 6, 1880 ; but his school and 
his library perpetuate his name, and make his memory 
honored. 



ASA PACKER 



AXD LEHIGH UNIVERSITY 



In the midst of twenty acres stands Lehigh Univer- 
sity, at South Bethlehem, Penn., founded by Asa 
Packer, — a great school of technology, with courses in 
civil, mechanical, mining, and electrical engineering, 
chemistry, and architecture. The school of general lit- 
erature of the University has a classical course, a Latin- 
scientific course, and a course in science and letters. 

To this institution Judge Packer gave three and one- 
quarter millions during his life ; and by will, eventually, 
the University will become one of the richest in the 
country. 

He did not give to Lehigh University alone. " St. 
Luke's Hospital, so well known throughout eastern 
Pennsylvania for its noble and practical charity," says 
Mr. Davis Brodhead in the Magazine of American His- 
tory, June, 1885, " is also sustained by the endowments 
of Asa Packer. Indeed, when we consider the scope of 
his generosity, of which Washington and Lee University 
of Virginia, Muhlenburg College .at Allentown, Penn., 
Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia, and many 
churches throughout his native State, of different de- 
nominations, can bear witness, we can the better appre- 
ciate how truly catholic were his gifts. His benefactions 

301 



302 ASA PACKER. 

did not pause upon State lines, nor recognize sectional 
divisions. 

" In speaking of his generosity, Senator T. F. Bayard 
once said, ' The confines of a continent were too narrow 
for his sense of human brotherhood, which recognized 
its ties everywhere upon this footstool of the Almighty, 
and decreed that all were to be united to share in the 
fruits of his life-long labor/ " 

Asa Packer was born in Groton, Conn., Dec. 29, 1805. 
As his father had been unsuccessful in business he 
could not educate his boy, who found employment in 
a tannery in North Stonington. His employer soon 
died, and the youth was obliged to go to work on a 
farm. 

He was ambitious, and determined to seek his fortune 
farther west ; so with real courage walked from Connec- 
ticut to Susquehanna County, Penn., and in the new 
county took up the trade of carpenter and joiner. 

For ten years he worked hard at his trade. He pur- 
chased a few acres in the native forest, cleared off the 
trees, and built a log house, to which he took his bride. 
When children were born into the home she made all 
the clothing, and in every way helped the poor, industri- 
ous carpenter to make a living. 

In 1833, when he was twenty-eight years old, Mr. 
Packer moved his family to Mauch Chunk in the Lehigh 
Valley, hoping that he could earn a little more money 
by his trade. 

When he had leisure, his busy mind was thinking how 
the vast supplies of coal and iron in the Lehigh Valley 
could be transported East. In the fall of 1833 the car- 
penter chartered a canal boat, and doing most of the 



ASA PACKEB. 303 

manual labor himself, lie started with a load of coal to 
Philadelphia through the Lehigh Canal. 

Making a little money out of this venture, he secured 
another boat, and in 1835 took his brother into partner- 
ship, and they together commenced dealing in general 
merchandise. This firm was the first to carry anthracite 
coal through to New York, it having been carried previ- 
ously to Philadelphia, and from there re-shipped to New 
York. 

With Asa Packer's energy, honesty, and broad think- 
ing, the business grew to good-sized proportions. Then 
he realized that they must have steam for quicker trans- 
portation. He urged the Lehigh Coal and Navigation 
Company to build a railroad along the banks of their 
canal ; but they refused, thinking that coal and lum- 
ber could only pay water freights. In September, 
1847, a charter was granted to the Delaware, Lehigh, 
Schuylkill, and Susquehanna Railroad Company ; but 
the people were indifferent, and the time of the char- 
ter was within seventeen days of expiring, when Asa 
Packer became one of the board of managers, and by 
his efforts graded one mile of the road, thus saving 
the charter. Two years later the name of the' com- 
pany was changed to the Lehigh Valley Railroad Com- 
pany, and Mr. Packer had a controlling portion of the 
stock. 

So much faith had he in the project that no one else, 
apparently, had faith in, that he offered to build the 
road from Mauch Chunk to Easton, a distance of forty- 
six miles, and take his pay in the stocks and bonds of 
the company. 

The offer was accepted ; and the road was finished in 



304 ASA PACK El! . 

1855, four years after it was begun, but not without 
many discouragements and great financial strain. Mr. 
Packer was made president of the railroad company, 
which position he held as long as he lived. 

Already wealth and honors had come to the energetic 
carpenter. In 1842 and 1843 he was elected to the 
State Legislature, and became one of the two associate 
judges for the new county of Carbon. 

In 1852, and again in 1854, he was elected to Congress 
as a Democrat, and made a useful record for himself. 
So universally respected was he in Pennsylvania for his 
Christian life, as well as for his successful business ca- 
reer, that he was prominently mentioned as a presiden- 
tial candidate, Pennsylvania voting solidly for him 
through fourteen ballots ; and when his name was 
withdrawn the delegates voted for Horatio Seymour. 

In 18G9, Judge Packer was nominated for governor; 
but the State was strongly Republican, having given 
General Grant the previous year 25,000 majority. 
Judge Packer was defeated by only 4,500 votes, show- 
ing his popularity in his own State. 

Two years before this, in the autumn of 1867, his 
great gift, Lehigh University, had been opened to 
pupils. It has now considerably over four hundred 
students, from thirty-five various States and coun- 
tries. It was named by Judge Packer, who would 
not allow his own name to be used. After his death 
the largest of the buildings was called Packer Hall, 
but by the wording of the charter the name of the 
University can never be changed. The Packer Memo- 
rial Church, a handsome structure, is the gift of Mrs. 
Packer Cummings, the daughter of the founder. To 



.4^ PACKER. 305 

the east of Packer Hall is the University Library 
with 97,000 volumes, the building costing $100,000, 
erected by Judge Packer in memory of his daughter 
Mrs. Lucy Packer Linderman. At his death he en- 
dowed the library with a fund of $500,000. 

Judge Packer died May 17, 1879, and is buried in the 
little cemetery at Mauch Chunk in the picturesque Le- 
high Valley. He lived simply, giving away during the 
last few years of his life over $4,000,000. 

Said the president of the University, Pev. Dr. John 
M. Leavitt, in a memorial sermon delivered in Univer- 
sity Chapel, June 15, 1879, "Not only his magnificent 
bequests are our treasures ; we have something more 
precious, — his character is the noblest legacy of Asa 
Packer to the Lehigh University. . . . 

"He was both gentle and inflexible, persuasive and 
commanding, in his sensibilities refined and delicate as a 
woman, and in his intellect and resolve clear and strong 
as a successful military leader. . . . Genial kindness 
flowed out from him as beams from the sun. Never at 
any period of his life is it possible to conceive in him a 
churlish or niggardly spirit. . . . During nearly fifty 
years he was connected with our church, usually as an 
officer, and for much of the long period was a constant 
and exemplary communicant. . . . Like the silent light 
giving bloom to the world, his faith had a vitalizing 
power. He grasped the truth of Christianity and the 
position of the church, and showed his creed by his 
life." 



CORNELIUS VANDERBILT 



AND VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY 



Cornelius Vanderbilt, born May 27, 1794, de- 
scended from a Dutch farmer, Jan Aertsen Van der 
Bilt, who settled in Brooklyn, N.Y., about 1650, began 
his career in assisting his father to convey his prod- 
uce to market in a sail-boat. The boy did not care 
for education, but was active in pursuit of business. 
At sixteen he purchased for one hundred dollars a boat, 
in which he ferried passengers and goods between New 
York City and Staten Island, where his father lived. 
He saved carefully until he had paid for it. At eigh- 
teen he was the owner of two boats, and captain of a 
third. 

At nineteen he married a cousin, Sophia Johnson, 
who by her saving and her energy helped him to ac- 
cumulate his fortune. At twenty-three he was worth 
$9,000, and was the captain of a steamboat at a salary 
of $1,000 a year. The boat made trips between New 
York City and New Brunswick, N.J., where his wife 
managed a small hotel. 

In 1829, when he was thirty-five, he began to build 
steamboats, and operated them on the Hudson River, on 
Long Island Sound, and on the route to Boston. When 
he was forty his property was estimated at $500,000. 

306 



^a^^iPpi %^% 




CORNELIUS VANDERBILT. 



CORNELIUS VANDERBILT. 307 

When the gold-seekers rushed to California, in 1848- 
1849, Mr. Vanderbilt established a line by way of Lake 
Nicaragua, and made large profits. He also established 
a line between New York and Havre. 

During the Civil War Mr. Vanderbilt gave the Van- 
derbilt, his finest steamship, costing $800,000, to the 
government, and sent her to the James River to assist 
when the Merrimac attacked the national vessels at 
Hampton Roads. Congress voted him a gold medal 
for his timely gift. 

In 1863 he began to invest in railroads, purchasing 
a large part of the stock of the New York and Harlem 
Railroad. His property was at this time estimated at 
$40,000,000. He soon gained controlling interest in 
other roads. His chief maxim was, " Do your business 
well, and don't tell anybody what you are going to do 
until you have done it." 

In February, 1873, Bishop McTyeire of Nashville, 
Tenn., was visiting with the family of Mr. Vanderbilt 
in New York City. The first wife was dead, and Mr. 
Vanderbilt had married a second time. Both men had 
married cousins in the city of Mobile, who were very 
intimate in their girlhood, and this brought the bishop 
and Mr. Vanderbilt into friendly relations. One even- 
ing when they were conversing about the effects of the 
Civil War upon the Southern States, Commodore Van- 
derbilt, as he was usually called, expressed a desire to 
do something for the South, and asked the bishop what 
he would suggest. 

The Methodist Church at the South had organized 
Central University at Nashville, but found it impossible 
to raise the funds needed to carry on the work. The 



308 CORNELIUS VANDERBILT. 

bishop stated the great need for such an institution, and 
Mr. Vanderbilt at once gave $500,000. In his letter to 
the Board of Trust, Mr. Vanderbilt said, "If it shall 
through its influence contribute even in the smallest 
degree to strengthening the ties which should exist be- 
tween all geographical sections of our common country, 
I shall feel that it has accomplished one of the objects 
that has led me to take an interest in it." 

Later, in his last illness, he gave enough to make his 
gift a million. The name of the institution was changed 
to Vanderbilt University. Mr. Vanderbilt died in New 
York, Jan. 4, 1877, leaving the larger part of his mil- 
lions to his son, William Henry Vanderbilt. He gave 
$50,000 to the Rev. Charles F. Deems to purchase the 
Church of the Strangers. 

Founder's Day at Vanderbilt University is celebrated 
yearly on the late Commodore's birthday, May 27, the 
day being ushered in by the playing of music and the 
ringing of the University bell. 

Bishop McTyeire, who, Mr. Vanderbilt insisted, should 
accept the presidency of the University, used to say, 
" My wife was a silent but golden link in the chain of 
Providence that led to Vanderbilt University." 

When an attractive site of seventy-five acres of land 
was chosen for the buildings, an agent who was recom- 
mending an out-of-the-way place protested, and said, 
" Bishop, the boys will be looking out of the windows 
there." 

"We want them to look out," said the practical 
bishop, "and to know what is going on outside." 

The secretary of the faculty tells a characteristic in- 
cident of this noble man. " He once cordially thanked 



CORNELIUS VANDERBILT. 309 

me for conducting through the University building a 
company of plain country people, among whom was a 
woman with a baby in her arms. 'Who knows what 
may come of that visit ? ' said he. ' It may bring that 
baby here as a student. He may yet be one of our 
illustrious men. Who knows ? Who knows ? Such 
people are not to be neglected. Great men come of 
them.' " 

Vanderbilt University now has over seven hundred 
students, and is sending out many capable scholars into 
fields of usefulness. 

Mr. William H. Vanderbilt, the son of Cornelius, 
gave over $450,000 to the University. His first gift 
of $100,000 was for the gymnasium, Science Hall, and 
Wesley Hall, the Home of the Biblical Department. 
Another $100,000 was for the engineering department. 
At his death, Dec. 8, 1885, he left the University by 
will $200,000. 

Mr. Vanderbilt's estate was estimated at $200,000,000, 
double the amount left by his father. It is said that he 
left $10,000,000 to each of his eight children, the larger 
part of his fortune going to two of his sons, Cornelius 
and William K. Vanderbilt. 

He gave for the removing of the obelisk from Egypt 
to Central Park, $103,000 ; to the College of Physi- 
cians and Surgeons of New York City, $500,000. His 
daughter Emily, wife of William D. Sloan, gave a 
Maternity Home in connection with the college, costing 
$250,000. Mr. Vanderbilt's four sons, Cornelius, Wil- 
liam, Frederick, and George, have erected a building for 
clinical instruction as a memorial of their father. 

Mr. Vanderbilt gave $100,000 each to the Home and 



310 CORNELIUS VANDERBILT. 

Foreign Missions of the Primitive Episcopal Church, to 
the New York Missions of that church, to St. Luke's 
Hospital, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the United 
Brethren Church at New Dorp, Staten Island, and to 
the Young Men's Christian Association. He gave 
$50,000 each to the Theological Seminary of the Epis- 
copal Church, the New York Bible Society, the Home 
for Incurables, Seamen's Society, New York Home for 
Intemperate Men, and the American Museum of Natural 
History. 

Cornelius Vanderbilt, the grandson of Commodore 
Vanderbilt, has given $10,000 for the library, and 
$20,000 for the Hall of Mechanical Engineering of 
Vanderbilt University. He has also given a building 
to Yale College in memory of his son, a large building 
at the corner of Madison Avenue and Forty-fifth Street 
to his railroad employees for reading, gymnasium hall, 
bathrooms, etc., $100,000 for the Protestant Cathedral, 
and much to other good works. 

Another son of William H., George W. Vanderbilt, 
who is making at his home in Asheville, N.C., a collec- 
tion as complete as possible of all trees and plants, 
established the Thirteenth Street Branch of The Free 
Circulating Library in New York City, in July, 1888, 
and has supported a normal training-school. 

A daughter of William H., Mrs. Elliott F. Shepard, 
has given to the Young Women's Christian Association 
in New York the Margaret Louisa Home, 14 and 16 
East Sixteenth Street, a handsome and well-oppointed 
structure where working-women can find a temporary 
home and comfort. The limit of time for each guest is 
four weeks. The house contains fifty-eight single and 



COHNELIUS VANDERBILT. 311 

twenty-one double rooms. It has proved a great bless- 
ing to those who are strangers in a great city, and need 
inexpensive and respectable surroundings. 

It is stated in the press that Mrs. Frederick Vander- 
bilt uses a generous portion of her income in preparing 
worthy young women for some useful position in life, - — 
as nurses, or in sewing or art, each individual having 
|5500 expended for such training. 



BARON MAURICE DE HIRSCH. 



" The death of Baron Hirsch," says the New York 
Tribune, April 22, 1896, " is a loss to the whole human 
race. To one of the most ancient and illustrious 
branches of that race it will seem a catastrophe. No 
man of this century has done so much for the Jews 
as he. . . . In his twelfth century castle of Eichorn 
in Moravia he conceived vast schemes of beneficence. 
On his more than princely estate of St. Johann in 
Hungary he elaborated the details. In his London 
and Paris mansions he put them into execution. He 
rose early and worked late, and kept busy a staff of 
secretaries and agents in all parts of the world. He 
not only relieved the immediate distress of the people, 
he founded schools to train them to useful work. He 
transported them by thousands from lands of bondage 
to lands of freedom, and planted them there in happy 
colonies. In countless other directions he gave his 
wealth freely for the benefit of mankind without re- 
gard to race or creed." 

Baron Hirsch died at Presburg, Hungary, April 20, 
1896, of apoplexy. He was the son of a Bavarian mer- 
chant, and was born in 1833. At eighteen he became a 
clerk in the banking-firm of Bischoffsheim & Gold- 
schmidt, and married the daughter of the former. He 

312 



BARON MAURICE BE HIRSCH. 313 

was the successful promoter of the great railway sys- 
tem from Budapest to Varna on the Black Sea. He 
made vast sums out of Turkish railway bonds, and is 
said to have been as rich as the Rothschilds. 

He gave away in his lifetime an enormous amount, 
stated in the press to have been $15,000,000 yearly, for 
the five years before his death. 

The New York Tribune says he gave much more 
than $20,000,000 for the help of the Jews. ' He gave 
to institutions in Egypt, Turkey, and Asia Minor, which 
bear his name. He offered the Russian Government 
$10,000,000 for public education if it would make no 
discrimination as to race or religion ; but it declined the 
offer, and banished the Jews. 

To the Hirsch fund in this country for the help of 
the Jews the baron sent more than $2,500,000. The 
managers of the fund spent no money in bringing the 
Jews to this country, but when here, opened schools for 
the children to prepare them to enter the public schools, 
evening schools for adults, training-schoois to teach 
them carpentry, plumbing, and the like ; provided pub- 
lic baths for them ; bought farm-lands for them in New 
Jersey and Connecticut, and assisted them to buy small 
farms; provided factories for young men and women, 
as at Woodbine, N.J., where 5,100 acres have been pur- 
chased for the Hirsch Colony, and a brickyard and 
kindling-wood factory established. The baron is said to 
have received 400 begging letters" daily, some of them 
from crowned heads, to whom he loaned large amounts. 
The favorite home of the baron was in Paris, where he 
lost his only and idolized son Lucien, in 1888, at the 
age of twenty. Much of the fortune that was to be the 



314 BARON MAURICE BE IIIRSCH. 

son's the father devoted to charity, especially to the 
alleviation of the condition of the European Jews, in 
whom the son w r as deeply interested. Many millions 
were left to Lucienne, the extremely pretty natural 
daughter of his son Lucien. - 



ISAAC RICH 



AND BOSTON UNIVERSITY. 



Isaac Rich left to Boston University, chartered in 
1869, more than a million and a half dollars. He was 
born in Wellfleet, Mass., in 1801, of humble parentage. 
At the age of fourteen he was assisting his father in a 
fish-stall in Boston, and afterwards kept an oyster-stall 
in Faneuil Hall. He became a very successful fish- 
merchant, and gave his wealth for noble purposes. 

Unfortunately, immediately after his death, Jan. 13, 
1872, the great fire of 1872 consumed the best invest- 
ments of the estate, and the panic of 1873 and other 
great losses followed ; so that for rebuilding the stores 
and banks in which the estate had been largely invested 
money had to be borrowed, and at the close of ten years 
the estate actually transferred to the University was a 
little less than $700,000. 

This sum would have been much larger had not the 
statutes of New York State made it illegal to convey 
to a corporation outside the State, like Boston Univer- 
sity, the real estate owned by Mr. Rich in Brooklyn, 
which reverted to the legal heirs. It is claimed that 
Mr. Rich was " the first Bostonian who ever donated 
so large a sum to the cause of collegiate education." 

The Hon. Jacob Sleeper, one of the three original in- 
315 



316 isaac rich. 

corporators of the University, gave to it over a quarter 
of a million dollars. The College of Liberal Arts is 
named in his honor. 

Boston University owes much of its wide reputation to 
its president, the Kev. Dr. William F. Warren, a success- 
ful author as well as able executive. "From the first he 
has favored co-education and equal opportunities for 
men and women. Dr. Warren said in 1890, "In my 
opinion the co-education of the sexes in high and gram- 
mar schools, as also in colleges and universities, is abso- 
lutely essential to the best results in the education of 
youth. 

" I believe it to be best for boys, best for girls, best 
for teachers, best for tax-payers, best for the community, 
best for morals and manners and religion." 

More than sixty years ago, in 1833, at its beginning, 
Oberlin College gave the first example of co-education 
in this country. In 1880 a little more than half the 
colleges in the United States, 51.3 per cent, had adopted 
the policy ; in 1890 the proportion had increased to 
65.5 per cent. Probably a majority of persons will 
agree with Dr. James MacAlister of Philadelphia, that 
"co-education is becoming universal throughout this 
country." 

Concerning Boston University, the report prepared 
for the admirable education series edited by Professor 
Herbert B. Adams of Johns Hopkins University, says, 
" This University was the first to afford the young 
women of Massachusetts the advantages of the higher 
education. Its College of Liberal Arts antedated Welles- 
ley and Smith and the Harvard Annex. Its doors, fur- 
thermore, were not reluctantly opened in consequence 



Isaac men. 317 

* 

of the pressure of an outside public opinion too great 
to be resisted. On the contrary, it was in advance of 
public sentiment on this line, and directed it. Its school 
of theology was the earliest anywhere to present to 
women all the privileges provided for men. In fact, 
this University was the first in history to present to 
women students unrestricted opportunities to fit them- 
selves for each of the learned professions. It was the 
first ever organized from foundation to capstone without 
discrimination on the ground of sex. Its publications 
bearing upon the joint education of the sexes have 
been sought in all countries where the question of open- 
ing the older universities to women has been under 
discussion." 

Boston University, 1896, has at present 1,270 stu- 
dents, — women 377, men 893, — and requires high grade 
of scholarship. It is stated that a the first four years' 
course of graded medical instruction ever offered in this 
country was instituted by this school in the spring of 
1878." 



DANIEL B. FAYERWEATHER 

AND OTHERS 



Mr. Fayerweather was born in Stepney, Conn., in 
1821 ; he was apprenticed to a farmer, learned the shoe- 
maker's trade in Bridgeport, and worked at the trade 
until he became ill. Then he bought a tin-peddler's 
outfit, and went to Virginia. When he could not sell 
for cash he took hides in payment. 

Afterwards he returned to his trade at Bridgeport, 
where he remained till 1854, when he was thirty-three 
years old. He then removed to New York City, and 
entered the employ of Hoyt Brothers, dealers in leather. 
Years later, on the withdrawal of Mr. Hoyt, the firm 
name became Fayerweather & Ladew. Mr. Fayerweather 
was a retiring, economical man, honest and respected. 
At his death in 1890, he gave to the Presbyterian Hos- 
pital, St. Luke's Hospital, and Manhattan Eye and Ear 
Infirmary, $25,000 each ; to the Woman's Hospital and 
Mount Sinai Hospital, $10,000 each; to Yale College, 
Columbia College, Cornell University, $200,000 each; 
to Bowdoin College, Amherst, Williams, Dartmouth, 
Wesleyan, Hamilton, Maryville, Yale Scientific School, 
University of Virginia, Rochester, Lincoln, and Hamp- 
ton Universities, $100,000 each; to Union Theological 
Seminary, Lafayette, Marietta, Adelbert, Wabash, and 

318 



DANIEL B. FAYERWEATHER AND OTHERS. 319 

Park Colleges, $50,000 each. The residue of the estate, 
over $3 ; 000,000, was divided among various colleges and 
hospitals. 

GEORGE I. SENEY, 

Who died April 7, 1893, in New York City, gave away, 
between 1879 and 1884, to Seney Hospital in Brooklyn, 
$500,000, and a like amount each to the Wesleyan 
University, and to the Methodist Orphan Asylum, 
Brooklyn. To Emory College and Wesleyan Female 
College, Macon, Ga., he gave $250,000; to the Long 
Island Historical Society, $100,000 ; to the Brooklyn 
Library, $60,000 ; to Drew Theological Seminary, Madi- 
son, N. J., a large amount ; to the Industrial School 
for Homeless Children, Brooklyn, $25,000, and a like 
amount to the Eye and Ear Infirmary of that city. He 
also gave twenty valuable paintings to the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art in New York. 

The givers to colleges have been too numerous to 
mention. The College of New Jersey, at Princeton, has 
received not less than one and a half million or two 
million dollars from the John C. Greene estate. 

Johns Hopkins left seven millions to found a univer- 
versity and hospital in Baltimore. 

The Hon. Washington C. De Pauw left at his death 
forty per cent of his estate, estimated at from two to 
five million dollars, to De Pauw University, Greencastle, 
Ind. Though some of the real estate decreased in 
value, the university has received already $300,000, and 
will probably receive not less than $600,000, or possibly 
much more, in the future. 

Mr. Jonas G. Clark gave to found Clark University, 
Worcester, Mass., about a million dollars to be devoted 



320 DANIEL B. FAYER WEATHER AND OTHERS. 

to post-graduates, or a school for specialists. Mr. Clark 
spent about eight years in Europe studying the highest 
institutions of learning. Matthew Vassar gave a million 
dollars to Vassar College for women at Poughkeepsie, 
N.Y. Ezra B. Cornell gave a million to Cornell Uni- 
versity at Ithaca, N.Y. Mr. Henry W. Sage has also 
been a most munificent giver to the same institution. 
Dr. Joseph W. Taylor of Burlington, N.J., a physician 
and merchant, and member of the Society of Friends, 
founded Bryn Mawr College for Women, at Bryn Mawr, 
Penn. His gift consisted of property and academic 
buildings worth half a million, and one million dollars 
in invested funds as endowment. 

Mr. Paul Tulane gave over a million to Tulane Uni- 
versity, New Orleans. George Peabody gave away nine 
millions in charities, — three millions to educational in- 
stitutions, three millions to education at the South to 
both whites and negroes, and three millions to build 
tenement houses for the poor of London, England. 

HORACE KELLEY, 

Of Cleveland, Ohio, left a half-million dollars for the 
foundation of an art gallery and school. His family 
were among the pioneer settlers, and their purchases of 
land in what became the heart of the city made their 
children wealthy. He was born in Cleveland, July 8, 
1819, and died in the same city, Dec. 5, 1890. 

He married Miss Fanny Miles, of Elyria, Ohio, and 
spent much of his life in foreign travel and in Califor- 
nia, where they had a home at Pasadena. His fortune 
was the result of saving as well as the increase in real- 
estate values. 



DANIEL B. FAYERWEATHER AND OTHERS. 321 

Mr. John Huntington made a somewhat larger gift 
for the same purpose. Mr. H. B. Hurlbut gave his 
elegant home, his collection of pictures, etc., valued at 
half a million, and Mr. J. H. Wade and others have 
contributed land, which make nearly two million dollars 
for the Cleveland Art Gallery and School. Mr. W. J. 
Gordon, of Cleveland, Ohio, gave land for Gordon's 
Park, bordering on Lake Erie, valued at a million dol- 
lars. It was beautifully laid out by him with drives, 
lakes, and flower-beds, and was his home for many 
years. 

MR. HART A. MASSEY, 

Formerly a resident of Cleveland, but in later years 
a manufacturer at Toronto, Canada, at his death, in the 
spring of 1896, left a million dollars in charities. To 
Victoria College, Toronto, $200,000, all but $50,000 as 
an endowment fund. This $50,000 is to be used for 
building a home for the women students. To each of 
two other colleges, $100,000, and to each of. two more, 
$50,000, one of the latter being the new American Uni- 
versity at Washington, D.C. To the Salvation Army, 
Toronto, $5,000. To the Fred Victor Mission, to pro- 
vide missionary nurses to go from house to house in 
Toronto, and care for the sick and the needy, $10,000. 
Many thousands were given to churches and various 
homes, and $10,000 to ministers worn out in service. 
To Mr. D. L. Moody's schools at Northfield, Mass., 
$10,000. Many have given to this noble institution 
established by the great evangelist, and it needs and 
deserves large endowments. The Frederick Marquand 
Memorial Hall, brick with gray stone trimmings, was 
built as a dormitory for one hundred girls, in 1884, at a 



322 DANIEL B. FAYEIi WEATHER AND OTHERS. 

cost of $67,000. Recitation Hall, of colored granite, 
was built in 1885, at a cost of $ 40,000, and, as well as 
some other buildings, was paid for out of the proceeds 
of the Moody and Sankey hymn-books. Weston Hall, 
costing $25,000, is the gift of Mr. David Weston of 
Boston. Talcott Library, a beautiful structure costing 
$20,000, with a capacity for forty thousand volumes, is 
the gift of Mr. James Talcott of New York, who, among 
many other benefactions, has erected Talcott Hall at 
Oberlin College, a large and haudsome boarding-hall for 
the young women. 



CATHARINE LORILLARD WOLFE. 



In the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York 
City, one sees an interesting picture of this noted giver, 
painted by Alexander Cabanel, commander of the Legion 
of Honor, and professor in the Ecole des Beaux Arts of 
Paris. 

Miss Wolfe, who was born in New York, March 8, 
1828, and died in New York, April 4, 1887, at the age 
of fifty-nine, was descended from an old Lutheran fam- 
ily, her great-grandfather, John David Wolfe, coining to 
this country from Saxony in 1729. Two of his four 
children, David and Christopher, served with credit in 
the War of the Revolution. After the war, David and a 
} T ounger brother were partners in the hardware business, 
and their sons succeeded them. 

John David Wolfe, the son of David, born July 24, 
1792, retired from business in the prime of his life, and 
devoted himself to benevolent work. He was a vestry- 
man of Trinity Parish, and later senior warden of Grace 
Church, New York. He gave to schools and churches 
all over the country, to St. Johnland on Long Island, to 
the Sheltering Arms in New York, the High School at 
Denver, Col., the Diocesan School at Topeka, Kan., etc. 
He was a helper in the New York Historical Society, 
and one of the founders of the American Museum of 

323 



324 CATHARINE LORILLARB WOLFE. 

Natural History in New York. He was its first presi- 
dent when he died, May 17, 1872, in his eightieth year, 
leaving only one child, Catharine, to inherit his large 
property. 

A portion of Miss Wolfe's seven millions came from 
her mother, Dorothea Lorillard, and the rest from her 
father. She was an educated woman, who had read 
much and travelled extensively, and, like her father, 
used her money in doing good while she lived. Her 
private benefactions were constant, and she went much 
among the poor and suffering. 

She built in East Broadway a Newsboy's Lodging 
House for not less than $50,000 ; the Italian Mission 
Church in Mulberry Street, $50,000, with tenement 
house in the same street, $20,000 ; the house for the 
clergy of the diocese of New York, 29 Lafayette Place, 
$170,000 ; St. Luke's Hospital, $30,000 ; Home for In- 
curables at Fordham, $30,000 ; Union College, Shenec- 
tady, N.Y., $100,000; Schools in the Western States, 
$50,000 ; Home and Foreign Missions, $100,000 ; Ameri- 
can Church in Rome, $40,000 ; American School of 
Classical Studies at Athens, $20,000 ; Virginia Semi- 
nary, $25,000 ; Grace House, containing reading and 
lecture rooms for the poor, and Grace Church, $200,000 
or more. She paid the expense of the exploring expe- 
dition to Babylonia under the leadership of the dis- 
tinguished Oriental scholar, Dr. William Hayes Ward, 
editor of the Independent. A friend tells of her sending 
him to New York, from her boat on the Nile, a check 
for $25,000 to be distributed in charities. She educated 
young girls ; she helped those who are unable to make 
their way in the world. 



CATHARINE LOBILLART) WOLFE. 325 

Having given all her life, she gave away over a mil- 
lion at her death in money and objects of art. To the 
Metropolitan Museum of Art she gave the Catharine 
Lorillard Wolfe collection, with pictures by Rosa 
Bonheur, Meissonnier, Gerome, Verboeckhoven, Hans 
Makart, Sir Frederick Leighton, Couture, Bouguereau, 
and many others. She added an endowment of $200,000 
for the preservation and increase of the collection. 

One of the most interesting to me of all the pictures 
in the Wolfe collection is the sheep in a storm, No. 118, 
"Lost," souvenir of Auvergne, by Auguste Frederic 
Albrecht Schenck, a member of the Legion of Honor, 
born in the Duchy of Holstein, 1828. Those who love 
animals can scarcely stand before it without tears. 

Others besides Miss Wolfe have made notable gifts 
to the Museum of Art. Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt gave, 
in 1887, Rosa Bonheur's world-renowned " Horse Fair," 
for which he paid $53,500. It Avas purchased at the 
auction sale of Mr. A. T. Stewart's collection, March 25, 
1887. 

Meissonnier's " Friedland, 1807 " was purchased at the 
Stewart sale by Mr. Henry Hilton for $66,000, and pre- 
sented to the museum. Mr. Stephen Whitney Phoenix, 
who gave so generously to Columbia College, was also, 
like Mr. George I. Seney, a great giver to the museum. 



MISS MARY ELIZABETH GARRETT 

Of Baltimore gave to the Medical School of Johns 
Hopkins University over $400,000, that women might 
have equal medical opportunities with men. 

President Daniel C. Gilman, in an article on Johns 
Hopkins University, says, " Much attention had been 
directed to the importance of medical education for 
women ; and efforts had been made by committees of 
ladies in Baltimore and other cities to secure for this 
purpose an adequate endowment, to be connected with 
the foundations of Johns Hopkins. As a result of this 
movement, the trustees accepted a gift from the com- 
mittee of ladies, a sum which, with its accrued interest,' 
amounted to $119,000, toward the endowment of a medi- 
cal school to which ' women should be admitted upon 
the same terms which may be prescribed for men.' 

" This gift was made in October, 1891 ; but as it was 
inadequate for the purposes proposed, Miss Mary E. 
Garrett, in addition to her previous subscriptions, offered 
to the trustees the sum of $306,977, which, with other 
available resources, made up the amount of $500,000, 
which had been agreed upon as the minimum endow- 
ment of the Johns Hopkins Medical School. These 
contributions enabled the trustees to proceed to the 
organization of a school of medicine which was opened 
to candidates for the degree of doctor of medicine in 
October, 1893." 

326 



MISS MARY ELIZABETH GAR RETT. 327 

Several women have aided Johns Hopkins, as indeed 
they have most institutions of learning in America. 
Mrs. Caroline Donovan gave to the university $100,000 
for the foundation of a chair of English literature. In 
1887 Mrs. Adam T. Bruce of New York gave the sum 
of $10,000 to found the Bruce fellowship in memory of 
her son, the late Adam T. Bruce, who had been a fellow 
and an instructor at the university. Mrs. William E. 
Wood year gave the sum of $10,000 to found five scholar- 
ships as a memorial of her deceased husband. Mr. and 
Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull endowed the Percy Turnbull 
memorial lectureship of poetry with an income of $1,000 
per annum. 



MRS. ANNA OTTENDORFER. 



" Whenever our people gratefully point out their 
benefactors, whenever the Germans in America speak of 
those who are objects of their veneration and their pride, 
the name of Anna Ottendorfer will assuredly be among 
the first. For all time to come her memory and her 
work will be blessed." Thus spoke the Hon. Carl Schurz 
at the bier of Mrs. Ottendorfer in the spring of 1884. 

Anna Behr was born in Wiirzburg, Bavaria, in a sim- 
ple home, Feb. 13, 1815. In 1837, when twenty-two 
years old, she came to America, remained a year with 
her brother in Niagara County, N.Y., and then married 
Jacob Uhl, a printer. 

In 1844 Mr. Uhl started a job-office in Frankfort Street, 
New York, and bought a small weekly paper called the 
New-Yorker Staats-Zeitung. His young wife helped 
him constantly, and finally the weekly paper became a 
daily. 

Her husband died in 1852, leaving her with six chil- 
dren and a daily paper on her hands. She was equal to 
the task. She declined to sell the paper, and managed 
it well for seven years. Then she married Mr. Oswald 
Ottendorfer, who was on the staff of the paper. 

Both worked indefatigably, and made the paper more 
successful than ever. She was always at her desk. 

328 



MRS. ANNA OTTENDORFER. 329 

" Her callers/' says Harper's Bazar, May 3, 1884, " had 
been many. Her visitors represented all classes of 
society, — the opulent and the poor, the high and the 
lowly. There was advice for the one, assistance for the 
other ; an open heart and an open purse for the deserv- 
ing ; a large charity wisely used." 

In 1875 Mrs. Ottendorfer built the Isabella Home for 
Aged Women in Astoria, Long Island, giving to it 
$150,000. It was erected in memory of her deceased 
daughter, Isabella. 

In 1881 she contributed about $40,000 to a memorial 
fund in support of several educational institutions, and 
the next year built and furnished the Woman's Pavil- 
ion of the German Hospital of New York City, giving 
$75,000. For the German Dispensary in Second Avenue 
she gave $100,000, also a library. 

At her death she provided liberally for many institu- 
tions, and left $25,000 to be divided among the em- 
ployees of the Staats-Zeitung. In 1879 the property 
of the paper was turned into a stock-company ; and, at 
the suggestion of Mrs. Ottendorfer, the employees were 
provided for by a ten-per-cent dividend on their annual 
salary. Later this was raised to fifteen per cent, which 
greatly pleased the men. 

The New York Sun, in regard to her care for her em- 
ployees, especially in her will, says, " She had always 
the reputation of a very clever, business-like, and char- 
itable lady. Her will shows, however, that she was 
much more than that — she must have been a wonderful 
woman." A year before her death the Empress Augusta 
of Germany sent her a medal in recognition of her many 
charities. 



330 MRS. ANNA OTTENDORFER. 

Mrs. Ottendorfer died April 1, 1884, and was buried 
in Greenwood. Her estate was estimated at $3,000,000, 
made by her own skill and energy. Having made it, 
she enjoyed giving it to others. 

Her husband, Mr. Oswald Ottendorfer, has given most 
generously to his native place Zwittau, — an orphan 
asylum and home for the poor, a hospital, and a fine 
library with a beautiful monumental fountain before it, 
crowned by a statue representing mother-love ; a woman 
carrying a child in her arms and leading another. His 
statue was erected in the city in 1886, and the town was 
illuminated in his honor at the dedication of the library. 



DANIEL P. STONE AND VALERIA G. 
STONE. 



When Mr. Stone, who was a dry-goods merchant of 
Boston, died in Maiden, Mass., in 1878, it was agreed 
between him and his wife, Mrs. Valeria G. Stone, that 
the property earned and saved by them should be given 
to charity. 

While Mrs. Stone lived she gave generously; and at 
her death, Jan. 15, 1884, over eighty years old, she gave 
away more than $2,000,000. To Andover Theological 
Seminary, to the American Missionary Association for 
schools among the colored people, $150,000 each, and 
much to aid struggling students and churches, and to 
save mortgaged homes. To Wellesley College to build 
Stone Hall, $110,000; to Bowdoin College, Amherst, 
Dartmouth, Drury, Carleton, Chicago Seminary, Hamil- 
ton, Iowa, Oberlin, Hampton Institute, Woman's Board 
for Armenia College, Turkey, Olivet College, Bipon, Il- 
linois, Marietta, Beloit, Robert College, Constantinople, 
Berea, Doane, Colorado, Washburne, Howard University, 
each from five to seventy-five thousand dollars. She 
gave also to hospitals, city mission work, rescue homes, 
and Christian associations. For evangelical work in 
France she gave $15,000. 



331 



SAMUEL WILLISTON, 

The giver of over one million and a half dollars was 
born at Easthampton, Mass., July 17, 1795. 

He was the son of the Rev. Payson Williston, first 
pastor of the First Church in Easthampton in 1789, and 
the grandson of the Rev. Noah Williston of West 
Haven, Conn., on his father's side, and of the Rev. 
Nathan Birdseye of Stratford, Conn., on his mother's. 

As the salary of the father probably never exceeded 
$350 yearly, the family were brought up in the strictest 
economy. At ten years of age the boy Samuel worked 
on a farm, earning for the next six years about seven 
dollars a month, and saving all that was possible. In 
the winters he attended the district school, and studied 
Latin with his father, as he hoped to fit himself for the 
ministry. 

He began his preparation at Phillips Academy, An- 
dover, carrying thither his worldly possessions in a 
bag under his arm. " We were both of us about as 
poor in money as we could be," said his roommate years 
afterward, the Rev. Enoch Sanford, D.D., " but our 
capital in hope and fervor was boundless." Samuel's 
eyes soon failed him, and he was obliged to give up the 
project of ever becoming a minister. He entered the 
store of Arthur Tap pan, in New York, as clerk ; but 
ill health compelled him to return to the farm with its 
out-door life. 

332 



SAMUEL WILLISTON 333 

When lie was twenty-seven he married Emily Graves 
of Williamsburg, Mass. She brought to the marriage 
partnership a noble heart, and every willingness to 
help. The story is told that she cut off a button from 
the coat of a visitor, with his consent, learned how it 
was covered, and soon furnished work for her neighbors 
as well as herself. 

After some years Mr. Williston began in a small 
way to manufacture buttons, and the business grew 
under his capable management till a thousand families 
found employment. He formed a partnership with Joel 
and Josiali Hayden at Haydenville, for the manufacture 
of machine-made buttons in 1835, then first introduced 
into this country from England. Four years later the 
business was transferred to Easthampton. 

Mr. Williston did not wait till he was very rich 
before he began to give. In 1837 he helped largely 
towards the erection of the First Church in Easthamp- 
ton. In 1841 he established Williston Seminary, which 
became a most excellent fitting-school for college. Dur- 
ing his lifetime he gave to this school about $270,000, 
and left it at his death an endowment of $600,000. 

He was also deeply interested in Amherst College, 
establishing the Williston professorship of rhetoric and 
oratory, the Graves, now Williston, professorship of 
Greek, and some others. " He began giving to Amherst 
College," writes Professor Joseph H. Sawyer, "when 
the institution was in the depths of poverty and well- 
nigh given over as a failure. He saved the college to 
mankind, and by example and personal solicitation stimu- 
lated others to give." He built and equipped Williston 
Hall, and assisted in the erection of other buildings. 



334 SAMUEL WILLISTON. 

He aided Mary Lyon in establishing Mount Holyoke 
Seminary, gave to Iowa College, the Protestant College 
in Beirut, Syria, and to churches, libraries, and various 
other institutions. 

He was active in all business enterprises, as well as 
works of benevolence. He was president of the Willis- 
ton Cotton Mills, the First National Bank, Gas Com- 
pany, and Nashawannuck (suspender) Company, all at 
Easthampton. He was the first president of the Hamp- 
shire and Hampden Railway, president of the First 
National Bank of Northampton, also of the Greenville 
Manufacturing Company (cotton cloths), member of 
both branches of the Legislature until he declined a 
re-election, one of the trustees of Amherst College, of 
the Westborough, Mass., Reform School, on the board 
of an asylum for idiots in Boston, a corporate member 
of the American Board, a trustee of Mount Holyoke 
Seminary, etc. 

Mi'. Williston overcame the obstacles of poor eye- 
sight, ill health, and poverty, and became a blessing to 
tens of thousands. His wife was equally a giver with 
him. The Rev. William Seymour Tyler, D.D., of Am- 
herst College, said at the semi-centennial celebration 
of Williston Seminary, June 14-17, 1891, " I knew its 
founders. I say 'founders,' for Mrs. Williston had 
scarcely less to do than Mr. Williston in planning and 
founding the building and endowing the seminary, as in 
all the successful measures and achievements of his 
remarkable and useful life ; and the few enterprises in 
which he did not succeed were those in which he did 
not follow her advice. I knew the founders from the 
time when, at the beginning of their prosperity, their 



SAMUEL WILLISTON. 335 

home and their factory were both in a modest wing of 
Father Williston's parsonage, until they had created 
Williston Seminary, made Easthampton, following out 
their great and good work, and entered into their rest." 

Five children were born to Mr. and Mrs. Williston, 
but all died in childhood. They adopted five children, 
two boys and three girls, reared them, and educated 
them for honored positions in life. 

Mr. Williston died at Easthampton, July IT, 1874 ; 
and his wife, two years younger than he, died April 12, 
1885. Both are buried in the cemetery at Easthamp- 
ton, to which burying-ground Mr. Williston gave, at his 
death, $10,000. He lived simply, and saved that he 
might give it in charities. 



JOHN F. SLATER AND DANIEL HAND, 



AND THEIR GIFTS TO THE COLORED PEOPLE. 



One of the best charities our country has ever had 
bestowed upon it is the million-dollar gift of Mr. Slater, 
and the million and a half gift of Mr. Hand, for the edu- 
cation of the colored people in the Southern States. 
Other millions of dollars are yet needed to train these 
millions of the colored race to self-help and good citizen- 
ship. 

Mr. John Fox Slater was born in Slatersville, R.I., 
March 4, 1815. He was the son of John Slater, who 
helped his brother Samuel to found the first cotton 
manufacturing industry in the United States. 

Samuel Slater came from England ; and setting up 
some machinery from memory, after arriving in this 
country, as nobody was permitted to carry plans out of 
England, he started the first cotton-mill in December, 
1790. A few years later his brother John came from 
England, and together they started a mill at Slaters- 
ville, E.I. 

They built mills also at Oxford, now Webster, Mass., 
and in time became men of wealth. Mr. Samuel Slater 
opened a Sunday-school for his workmen, one of the 
first institutions of that kind in this country. 

His son John early developed rare business qualities, 
336 



JOHN F. SLATER AND DANIEL HAND. 337 

and at the age of seventeen was placed in charge of one 
of his father's mills at Jewett City, near Norwich, Conn. 
He had received a good academical education, had ex- 
cellent judgment, would not speculate, and was noted 
for integrity and honor. He became not only the head 
of his own extensive business, but prominent in many 
outside enterprises. 

His manners were refined, he was self-poised and 
somewhat reserved, and very unostentatious, thereby 
showing his true manhood. He read on many sub- 
jects, — finance, politics, and religion, and was a good 
conversationalist. 

As he grew richer he felt the responsibility of his 
wealth. He gave generously to the country during the 
Civil War ; he contributed largely to the establishment 
of the Norwich Free Academy and to the Congrega- 
tional Church in Norwich with which he was con- 
nected, and to other worthy objects. 

He determined to do good with his money while 
he lived. After the war, having given largely for 
the relief of the freedmen, he decided to give to a 
board of trustees $1,000,000, for the purpose of "up- 
lifting the lately emancipated population of the South- 
ern States and their posterity by conferring on them 
the blessings of Christian education." 

When asked the precise meaning of the phrase 
"Christian education," he replied, "that in the sense 
which he intended, the common school teaching of 
Massachusetts and Connecticut was Christian educa- 
tion. That it is leavened with a predominant and 
salutary Christian influence." 

He said in his letter to the trustees, " It has pleased 



338 JOHN F. SLATER AND DANIEL HAND. 

God to grant me prosperity in my business, and to put 
it into my power to apply to charitable uses a sum 
of money so considerable as to require the counsel of 
wise men for the administration of it." In committing 
the money to their hands he " humbly hoped that the 
administration of it might be so guided by divine wis- 
dom as to be, in its turn, an encouragement to philan- 
thropic enterprise on the part of others, and an enduring 
means of good to our beloved country and to our fellow- 
men." 

Mr. Slater's gift awakened widespread interest and 
appreciation. The Congress of the United States voted 
him thanks, and caused a gold medal to be struck in his 
honor. 

Mr. Slater lived to see his work well begun, intrusted 
to such men as ex-President Hayes at the head of the 
trust, Phillips Brooks, Governor Colquitt of Georgia, 
his son William A. Slater, and others. He died May 7, 
1884, at Norwich, at the age of sixty-nine. 

The general agent of the trust for several years was 
the late Dr. A. G. Haygood of Georgia, who resigned 
when he was made a bishop in the Methodist Church. 
Since 1891 Dr. J. L. M. Curry of Washington, D.C., 
chairman of the Educational Committee, and author of 
" The Southern States of the American Union " and 
other works, has been the able agent of the Slater as 
well as Peabody Funds. Dr. Curry, member of both 
National and Confederate Congresses, and minister to 
Spain for three years, has been devoted to education 
all his life, and gives untiring industry and deep inter- 
est to his work. 

The Slater Fund is used in normal schools to fit 



JOHN F. SLATER AND DANIEL HAND. 339 

students for teaching and for industrial education, and 
much of it is paid in salaries to teachers. 

Dr. Curry, in his Report for 1892-1893, gives a list of 
the schools aided in that year, all of which he visited 
during the year. To Bishop College, Marshall, Tex., 
with 248 colored students, $1,000 was given for normal 
work and manual training; to Central Tennessee Col- 
lege, Nashville, with 493 students, $2,000, to pay the 
teachers in the mechanical shop, carpentry, sewing, 
cooking, etc.*; to Clark University, Atlanta, Ga., 415 
students, $2,500, mostly to the mechanical department, 
etc. ; to Spelman Female Institute, Atlanta, with 744 
pupils, $5,000 ; the institute has nine buildings, with 
property valued at $200,000. 

To Claflin University, Orangeburg, S.C., with 635 
students, both men and women, $3,096, chiefly to the 
industrial department, — iron-working, harness-making, 
masonry, painting, etc. ; to Hampton Normal Institute, 
Hampton, Va., the noble institution to which General 
S. C. Armstrong gave his life, $5,000, for training girls 
in housework, to the machine-shop, for teachers in natu- 
ral history, mathematics, etc. There are nearly 800 
pupils in the school. 

To the Leonard Medical School, Shaw University, 
Raleigh, N.C., $1,000. The medical faculty are all 
white men. To the university itself, with 462 pupils, 
$2,500 ; to the Meharry Medical College, Nashville, 
117 men and four women, $1,500 ; to the State Normal 
School, Montgomery, Ala., with 900 students, $2,500 ; 
to the Normal and Industrial Institute, Tuskegee, Ala., 
with 400 men and 320 women, $2,100, given largely to 
the departments of agriculture, leather and tin, brick- 



340 JOHN F. SLATER AND DANIEL HAND. 

making, saw-mill work, plastering, dressmaking, etc. 
" This institution is an achievement of Mr. Booker T. 
Washington, a graduate of Hampton Normal Institute," 
says the Keport of the Commissioner of Education, 
1891-1892. "Opened, in 1881 with one teacher and 
thirty pupils, it attained such success that in 1892 
there were 44 officers and teachers and over 600 stu- 
dents. It also owns property estimated at $150,000, 
upon which there is no encumbrance. General S. C. 
Armstrong said of it, 'I think it is the noblest and 
grandest work of any colored man in the land.' " 

To Straight University, New Orleans, La., with 600 
pupils, the Slater Fund gave $2,000. The late Thomas 
Lafon, a colored man, left at death $5,800 to this ex- 
cellent institution ; to Talladega College, Talladega, 
Ala., with 519 students, $2,500; to Tougaloo University, 
Tougaloo, Miss., with 392 students, $3,000. This insti- 
tute, under the charge of the American Missionary As- 
sociation, began twenty-five years ago with one small 
building surrounded by negro cabins. Now there are 
ten buildings in the midst of five hundred acres. Most 
of these institutions for colored people have small libra- 
ries, which would be greatly helped by the gift of good 
books. 

In nine years, from 1883 to 1892, nearly $400,000 
was given from the Slater Fund to push forward the 
education of the colored people. Most of them were 
poor and left in ignorance through slavery ; but they 
have made rapid progress, and have shown themselves 
worthy of aid. The American Missionary, June, 1883, 
tells of a law-student at Shaw University who helped 
to support his widowed mother, taught a school of 80 



JOHN F. SLATER AND DANIEL HAND. 341 

scholars four miles in the country, walking both ways, 
studying law and reciting at night nearly a mile away 
from his home. When admitted to the bar, he sus- 
tained the best examination in a class of 30, all the 
others white. 

The Hoivard Quarterly, January, 1893, cites the case 
of a young woman who prepared for college at Howard 
University. She led the entire entrance class at the 
Chicago University, and received a very substantial re- 
ward in a scholarship that will pay all expenses of the 
four years' course. 

Mr. La Port, the superintendent of construction of 
the George R. Smith College, Sedalia, Mo., was born a 
slave ; he ran away at twelve, worked fourteen years to 
obtain money enough to secure his freedom, is now 
worth $75,000, and supports his aged mother and the 
widow of the man from whom he purchased his freedom. 

The highest honor at Boston University in 1892 was 
awarded to a colored man, Thomas Nelson Baker, born 
a slave in Virginia in 1860. The class orator at Har- 
vard College in 1890 was a colored man, Clement Gar- 
nett Morgan. 

DANIEL HAND 

Was born in Madison, Conn., July 16, 1801. He was 
descended from good Puritan ancestors, who came to this 
country in 1635 from Maidstone, Kent, England. His 
grandfather on his father's side served in the War of 
the Revolution, and his ancestors on his mother's side 
both in the old French War and the Revolutionary War. 
Daniel, one of seven boys, lived on a farm till he was 
about sixteen years of age, when he went to Augusta, 



342 JOHN F. SLATER AND DANIEL HAND. 

Ga., in 1818, with an uncle, Daniel Meigs, a merchant of 
that place and of Savannah. Young Hand proved' most 
useful in his uncle's business ; in time succeeded him, 
and became one of the leading merchants of the South. 
Some fifteen years before the war Mr. Hand took into 
business partnership in Augusta Mr. George W. Wil- 
liams, a native of Georgia, who later established a busi- 
ness in Charleston, S.C., Mr. Hand furnishing the larger 
part of the capital. The business in Augusta was given 
in charge to a nephew, and Mr. Hand temporarily re- 
moved to New York City. 

When the Civil War became imminent, Mr. Hand 
went South, was arrested as a " Lincoln spy " in New 
Orleans; but no basis being found for the charge, was 
released on parole that he would report to the Confeder- 
ate authority at Richmond. On his way thither, passing 
the night in Augusta, he would have been mobbed by a 
lawless crowd who gathered about his hotel, had not 
a few of the leading men of Atlanta hurried him off to 
jail in a carriage with the mayor and a few friends as a 
guard. 

Reporting at Richmond, Mr. Hand was allowed to go 
where he chose, if within the limits of the Confederacy, 
and chose Asheville, N.C., for his home until the war 
ended, spending his time in reading, of which he was 
very fond, and then came North. 

The Confederate Courts at Charleston tried to con- 
fiscate his property, but this was prevented largely 
through the influence of Mr. Williams. Some years 
later, when the latter became involved, and creditors 
were pressing for payment, Mr. Hand, the largest cred- 
itor, refused to secure his claim, saying, "If Mr. 



JOHN F. SLATER AND DAX1EL HAND. 343 

Williams lives, lie will pay liis debts. I am not at 
all concerned abont it." The money was paid by 
Mr. Williams at his own convenience after several 
years. 

Mr. Hand had married early in life his cousin, Eliza- 
beth Ward, daughter of Dr. Levi Ward of Rochester, 
N.Y., who died early, as well as their young children. 
Mr. Hand remained a widower for more than fifty years. 

Bereft of wife and children, fond of the Southern 
people, yet heartily opposed to slavery, and realizing the 
helplessness and ignorance of the slaves, Mr. Hand de- 
cided to give to the American Missionary Association 
$1,000,894.25, the income to be used " f or the purpose 
of educating needy and indigent colored people of Afri- 
can descent, residing, or who may hereafter reside, in 
the recent slave States of the United States of America. 
... I would limit," he said, " the sum of $100 as the 
largest sum to be expended for any one person in any 
one year from this fund." The fund, transferred Oct. 
22, 1888, was to be known as the " Daniel Hand Educa- 
tional Fund for Colored People." 

Upon Mr. Hand's death, at Guilford, Conn., Dec. 17? 
1891, in the family of one of his nieces, it was found 
that he had made the American Missionary Associa- 
tion his residuary legatee. About $500,000 passed into 
the possession of the Association, to be used for the 
same purpose as the million dollars ; and about $200,000, 
it is believed, will eventually go to the organization 
after life-use by others. 

The American Missionary Association is a noble so- 
ciety, organized in 1846 and chartered in 1862, for help- 
ing the poor and neglected races at our own doors, by 



344 JOHN F. SLATER AND DANIEL HAND. 

establishing churches and schools in the South among 
both negroes and whites, in the West among the Indians, 
and in the Pacific States among the Chinese. 

The Rev. Dr. A. D. Mayo says, in his book on the 
Southern women in the recent educational movement in 
the South, "Perhaps the most notable success in the sec- 
ondary, normal, and higher training of 'colored youth 
has been achieved by the American Missionary Associa- 
tion. ... At present its labors in the South are largely 
directed to training superior colored youth of both sexes 
for the work of teaching in the new public schools. It 
now supports six institutions called colleges and univer- 
sities, in which not only the ordinary English branches 
are taught, but opportunity is offered for the few who 
desire a moderate college course." Fisk University of 
Nashville, which has sent out over 12,000 students, is 
one of the most interesting. 

The American Missionary Association assists 74 schools 
for colored people with 12,000 pupils, 198 churches for 
the same with over 10,000 members and a much larger 
number in the Sunday-schools ; 14 churches among the 
Indians with over 900 members ; 20 schools among the 
Chinese at the West with over 1,000 pupils and over 
300 Christian Chinese. 

Mr. Hand's noble gift aids about fifty schools in the 
various Southern States from its income of over $50,000 
yearly. 

Mr. Hand was a man of fine personal presence, of ex- 
tensive reading, and wide observation. He gave, says 
his relative, Mr. George A. Wilcox, " for the well-being 
of many, both within and without the family connection, 
who have come within the province of deserved assist- 



JOHN F. SLATER AND DANIEL HAND. 345 

ance ; befriending those who try to help themselves, 
whether successfully or not, but unalterably stern in his 
disfavor when idleness or dissipation lead to want." He 
gave the academy bearing his name to his native town 
of Madison, Conn. He joined the First Presbyterian 
Church in Augusta, Ga., when he was twenty-eight 
years of age, and was for thirty years its efficient Sun- 
day-school superintendent. He organized a teachers' 
meeting, held every Saturday evening, which proved of 
great benefit. 

He always loved the Scriptures. He said one day to 
a friend, as he laid his hand on his well-worn Bible, " I 
always read from that book every morning, and have 
done so from my boyhood, except in a comparatively 
few cases of unusual interruption or special hindrance." 

He was often heard to say, " I have now a very short 
time for this world, but I take no concern about that ; 
no matter where or when I die, I hope I am ready to go 
when called." 

The temperance work needs another Daniel Hand to 
furnish a million dollars for its labors among the colored 
men of the South, where, says the thirtieth annual re- 
port of the National Temperance Society, " the saloon is 
everywhere working their ruin. It destroys their man- 
hood, despoils their homes, impoverishes their families, 
defrauds their wives and children, and debauches the 
whole community." 

The National Temperance Society, whose efficient and 
lamented Secretary, John N. Stearns, died April 21, 
1895, was organized in 1865. It has printed and scat- 
tered over 900,000,000 pages of total-abstinence litera- 
ture. With its board of thirty managers representing 



346 JOHN F. SLATER AND DANIEL HAND. 

nearly all denominations and temperance organizations, 
ever on the alert to assist in making and enforcing help- 
ful laws and to lessen the power of the liquor traffic, it 
is doing its work all over the nation. Says one who has 
long been identified with this organization, " T believe 
there is no Missionary Society, either Home or Foreign, 
that is doing more for the cause of Christ than this so- 
ciety, especially in saving the boys and girls; and yet, 
so far as I know, it receives less donations than any 
other society, and very rarely a legacy." Mr. William 
E. Dodge, the well-known merchant of New York, left 
the Society, by will, $5,000. Mr. W. B. Spooner of 
Boston, and Mr. James H. Kellogg of Rochester, N.Y., 
each left $5,000. 

It is a hopeful sign of the times when laws are passed 
in thirty-nine States and all the Territories requiring the 
teaching of the nature and effects of alcoholic drinks 
upon the human system. It is encouraging when a 
million members of Christian Endeavor societies pledge 
themselves " to seek the overthrow of this evil at all 
times in every lawful way." Our country has given 
grandly for education ; it will in the future give more 
generously to reforms which help to do away with pov- 
erty and crime. 



GEORGE T. ANGELL. 



George T. Angell, the president and founder of 
" The American Humane Education Society," and presi- 
dent and one of the founders of "The Massachusetts 
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals/' 
deserves, with the late lamented Henry Bergh of New 
York, the thanks of the nation for their noble work 
in teaching, kindness to dumb creatures, and prevent- 
ing cruelty. No charity can lie nearer to my own 
heart than the societies for the prevention of cruelty 
to animals. 

Mr. Angell, now seventy-three years of age, — he was 
born at Southbridge, Mass., June 5, 1823, — the son of 
a minister, a graduate of Dartmouth College, a success- 
ful lawyer, gave up his practice of seventeen years, in 
1868, to devote himself and his means, without pay, to 
humane work all over the world. He has enlisted the 
highest and the lowest in behalf of dumb animals. He 
has spoken before schools and conventions, before legis- 
latures and churches, before kings and in prisons, in 
behalf of those who must patiently submit to wrong, 
and have no voice to plead for themselves. 

Mr. Angell helped to establish the first " American 
Band of Mercy ; " and now there are nearly 25,000 bands, 
with a membership of between one and two million per- 

347 



348 GEORGE T. AN G ELL. 

sons, all pledged " to try to be kind to all living crea- 
tures, and try to protect them from cruel usage." 

He has helped to scatter more than two million copies, 
in nearly all European and some Asiatic languages, of 
Anna Sewell's charming autobiography of an English 
horse, " Black Beauty/' telling both of kind and cruel 
masters. Ten thousand copies have recently been printed 
for circulation in the schools of Italy. 

A thousand cruel fashions, such as that of docking 
horses, or killing for mere sport, will be done away 
when men and women have given these subjects more 
careful thought. 

" Evil is wrought by want of thought 
As well as want of heart," 

wrote Thomas Hood in " The Lady's Dream." 

" Our Dumb Animals," published in Boston, of which 
Mr. Angell is the editor, and which should be in every 
home and school in the land, has a circulation of about 
50,000 to 60,000 a month, and is sent to the editors of 
20,000 American publications. Over one hundred and 
seventeen million pages of humane literature are printed 
in a single year by the American Humane Education 
Society and the Massachusetts S. P. C. A. ; the latter 
society has convicted about 5,000 persons in the last 
few years of overloading horses, beating dogs or incit- 
ing them to fight, starving animals, or other forms of 
cruelty. 

In most large cities drinking fountains have been pro- 
vided for man and beast ; transportation and slaughter 
of animals have been rendered more humane ; children 



GEORGE T. ANGELL. 349 

have been taught kindness to the weakest and smallest 
of God's- creatures ; to feel with Cowper, — 

" I would not enter on my list of friends 
(Though graced with polished manners and fine sense, 
Yet wanting sensihility) the man 
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm." 

Some persons are following the example of Baroness 
Burdett-Coutts in London, who has provided a home for 
lost dogs, where they are kept till their owners call for 
them, or are given away to those who know that to have 
a pet in the home is a sure way to make people more 
tender and more noble in character. Such a place is 
found on Lake Street, Brighton, Mass., in the Ellen M. 
Gifford Sheltering Home for Animals, where each year 
several hundred dogs and cats are received, and homes 
found for them. There is a large playground for the 
dogs, and greater space for the cats. It is stated in 
the Report that the Boston police " have always gener- 
ously and humanely aided the work of the Shelter." 
The objects of the "Sheltering Home " are : — 

" First, to aid and succor the waifs and strays of the 
city. 

" Second, to alleviate the sufferings of sick, abused, 
and homeless animals. 

" Third, to find good homes for all those who come to 
the Shelter, as far as possible. 

" Fourth, to spread the gospel of humanity towards 
dumb creatures by practical example." 

It would be difficult to find in history a truly great 
person, like Wellington, Abraham Lincoln, Dr. Samuel 
Johnson, or Sir Walter Scott, who has not been a lover 



350 GEORGE T. ANGELL. 

of dogs or birds or cats. Frederick the Great when 
dying asked an attendant to cover one of his dogs 
which seemed to be shivering with the cold. 

"Our Dumb Animals" for May, 1896, gives the 
names of more than a hundred persons who have left 
legacies in the last few years to the Massachusetts 
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. 
Every State and city needs more of these generous 
givers. A letter lies before me from Mr. E. C. Parme- 
lee, the general agent of the society in Cleveland, Ohio., 
which says, " I regret to say that we have no dog shel- 
ter. . . . We should very much like to have one, and 
a hospital for broken-down and neglected horses. . . . 
We have very much hoped that we should have a be- 
quest at no very distant day sufficiently large to build 
such a block as we need, with dormitories for children 
who are picked up in the night, and with an apartment 
for keeping our horse-ambulance, with a pair of horses 
and driver always at command, to remove such horses 
as are disabled, and fall in the streets from various 
causes." 

Every society needs more agents to watch carefully 
the dumb creatures who carry heav}^ loads, or are neg- 
lected or ill treated ; and the gospel of kindness to 
animals needs to be carried to every part of the earth. 



WILLIAM W. CORCORAN 



AND HIS ART GALLERY. 



William Wilson Corcoran was born Dec. 27, 
1798, at Georgetown, D.C. He was the son of Thomas 
Corcoran, who settled in Georgetown when a youth, 
and became one of its leading citizens. Hcwas mayor, 
postmaster, and one of the founders of the Columbian 
College, of which institution he was an active trustee 
while he lived. He was also one of the principal 
founders of two Episcopal churches in Georgetown, 
St. John's and Christ's Church, and was always a 
vestryman in one or the other. 

His son William, after a good preparatory education, 
spent a year at the Georgetown College, and a year at 
the school of the Rev. Addison Belt, a graduate of 
Princeton. His father desired that he should complete 
his college course ; but William was eager to enter upon 
a business life, and Avhen he was seventeen went into 
the dry-goods store of his brothers, James and Thomas 
Corcoran. Two years later they established him in 
business under the firm name of W. W. Corcoran & Co. 
The firm prospered so well that the wholesale auction 
and commission business was begun in 1819. 

For four years the firm made money; but in the 
spring of 1823, they, with many other merchants in 

351 



352 WILLIAM W. CORCORAN. 

Georgetown and Baltimore, failed, and were obliged to 
settle with their creditors for fifty cents on the dollar. 

Young Corcoran, then twenty-five years of age, de- 
voted himself to caring for the property of his father, 
who was growing old. The father died Jan. 27, 1830. 
Five years later, in 1835, Mr. Corcoran married Louise 
A. Morris, who lived but five years after their marriage, 
dying Nov. 21, 1840, leaving a son and daughter. The 
son died soon after the death of his mother ; the daugh- 
ter grew to womanhood, and became a great joy to her 
father. She married the Hon. George Eustis, a member 
of Congress from Louisiana, and died in early life at 
Cannes, France, 1867, leaving three small children. 

Mr. Corcoran long before this had become a very suc- 
cessful banker. Two years after his marriage, in 1837, 
he moved his family to Washington, and began the 
brokerage business in a small store, ten by sixteen feet, 
on Pennsylvania Avenue near Fifteenth Street. After 
three years he took into partnership Mr. George W. 
Riggs, the son of a wealthy man from Maryland, under 
the firm name of Corcoran & Riggs. 

In 1845 they purchased the old United States Bank 
building, corner of Fifteenth Street and New York Ave- 
nue ; and two years later Mr. Corcoran settled with his 
creditors of 1823, paying principal and interest, about 
$46,000. During the Mexican war the firm made exten- 
sive loans to the government, which conservative bank- 
ers regarded as a hazardous investment. Mr. Riggs 
retired from the firm July 1, 1848 ; and his younger 
brother, Elisha, was made a junior partner. 

" In August, 1848, having about twelve millions of the 
six-per-cent loan of 1848 on hand, and the demand for it 



WILLIAM W. CORCORAN. 353 

falling off in this country, and the stock being one per 
cent below the price at which Corcoran & Biggs took it, 
Mr. Corcoran determined to try the European markets ; 
and, after one day's reflection, embarked for London, 
where, on arrival, he was told by Mr. Bates, of the 
house of Baring Bros. & Co., and Mr. George Peabody, 
that no sale could be made of the stock, and no money 
could be raised by hypothecation thereof, and they 
regretted that he had not written to them to inquire 
before coming over. He replied that he was perfectly 
satisfied that such would be their views, and therefore 
came, confident that he could convince them of the 
expediency of taking an interest in the securities ; and 
that the very fact that London bankers had taken them 
would make it successful. 

" Ten days after his first interview with them, Mr. 
Thomas Baring returned from the Continent, and with 
him he was more successful. A sale of five millions at 
about cost (one hundred and one here) was made to six 
of the most eminent and wealthy houses in London, viz., 
Baring Bros. & Co., George Peabody, Overend, Gurney, 
& Co., Dennison & Co., Samuel Jones Lloyd, and James 
Morrison. 

" This was the first sale of American securities made 
in Europe since 1837 ; and on his return to New York 
he was greeted by every one with marked expressions 
of satisfaction, his success being a great relief to the 
money market by securing that amount of exchange 
in favor of the United States. On his success being 
announced, the stock gradually advanced until it reached 
one hundred and nineteen and one-half, thus securing 
by his prompt and successful action a handsome profit 



354 WILLIAM W. CORCORAN 

which would otherwise have resulted in a serious 
loss." 

On April 1, 1854, Mr. Corcoran withdrew from the 
banking-firm, and devoted himself to the management 
of his property and to his benevolent projects. 

In 1859 he began, at the northeast corner of Pennsyl- 
vania Avenue and Seventeenth Street, a building for the 
encouragment of the Fine Arts. The structure was used 
during the Civil War for military purposes. In 1869 
Mr. Corcoran deeded this property to trustees. " I 
shall ask you to receive," he wrote the trustees, " as a 
nucleus, my own gallery of art, which has been collected 
at no inconsiderable pains ; and I have assurances from 
friends in other cities, whose tastes and liberality have 
taken this direction, that they will contribute fine works 
of art from their respective collections. ... I venture 
to hope that with your kind co-operation and judicious 
management we shall have provided, at no distant day, 
not only a pure and refined pleasure for residents and 
visitors of the national metropolis, but have accom- 
plished something useful in the development of Ameri- 
can genius." 

In 1869 Mr. Corcoran also deeded to trustees the 
Louise Home, erected in memory of his wife and daugh- 
ter, as a home for refined and educated gentlewomen 
who had "become reduced by misfortune." 

The deed specified that " there shall be no discrimi- 
nation or distinction on account of religious creed or 
sectarian opinions, in respect to the trustees, direct- 
resses, officers, or inmates of the said establishment ; but 
all proper facilities that may be possible in the judg- 
ment of the trustees shall be allowed and furnished to 



WILLIAM W. COIiCOIlAN. 355 

the inmates for the worship of Almighty God, according 
to each one's conscientious belief." 

The building and grounds of the Louise Home in 
1869 were estimated at $200,000, and are now worth 
probably over $500,000. The endowment consisted of 
an invested fund of $325,000. 

Mr. Corcoran gave generously as long as he lived, 
having decided early in life that "at least one-half of 
his moneyed accumulations should be held for the wel- 
fare of men." 

In Oak Hill Cemetery he erected a beautiful monu- 
ment to the memory of John Howard Payne, author of 
"Home, Sweet Home." It is a shaft of Carrara marble, 
surmounted by a bust one and one-half times the size 
of the average man. 

In his old age he purchased the Patapsco Institute at 
Ellicott's Mills, and gave the title-deeds to the two grand- 
nieces of John Randolph of Roanoke, who were in re- 
duced circumstances, that they might open a school. 

He gave to Columbian University, it is stated, houses 
and lands and money, amounting to a quarter of a mil- 
lion dollars. The University of Virginia, the Ascension 
Church, and other colleges and churches, were enriched 
through his generosity. 

Mr. Corcoran died in Washington, Feb. 24, 1888, at 
the age of ninety years. He had given away over five 
million dollars. 

" The treasures of the Corcoran Art Gallery," said its 
president in laying the corner-stone of a new building 
two years ago, " represent a money cost of $346,938 
(exclusive of donations), a cost value which, of course, 
is greatly below the real value which these treasures 



356 WILLIAM W. CORCORAN. 

represent to-day. The total value of the gallery, in its 
treasures, its endowments, and its buildings, is estimated 
to-day at $1,926,938. The total number of visitors who 
have inspected the paintings and sculpture exhibited 
in the gallery from the date of its opening down to the 
beginning of this month [May, 1896] was 1,696,489." 



JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER 



AND CHICAGO UNIVERSITY. 



From our windows we look out upon a forest of beau- 
tiful beech-trees, great oaks, and maples. There are 
well-kept drives, cool ravines with tasteful walks, a 
pretty lake and boat-house, and great stretches of lawn, 
in the four hundred or more acres, such as one sees in 
England. The gravelled roadways are appropriately 
named. "Blithedale" leads into a charming valley, 
through which a brook winds in and out, under a dozen 
bridges. The " Maze " leads through clusters of beeches 
and other undergrowth, and opens upon a magnificent 
view of blue Lake Erie at the right and the busy city 
at the left. In the distance, on a hilltop, stands a large 
whife frame house, with red roof. Vines clamber over 
the broad double porches, red trumpet-creepers twine 
and blossom about some of the big oaks, beds of roses 
send out their fragrance, and the place looks most 
attractive and restful. 

It is " Forest Hill," at Cleveland, Ohio, the summer 
home of Mr. John D. Rockefeller, probably the greatest 
giver in America. Our largest giver heretofore, so far 
as known, was George Peabody, who gave at his death 
$9,000,000. Mr. Rockefeller has given about $7,500,000 

357 



358 JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER. 

to one institution, besides several hundred thousand 
dollars each year for the past twenty-five years to vari- 
ous charities. 

Mr. Eockefeller comes from very honorable ancestry. 
The Rockefellers were an old French family in Nor- 
mandy, who moved to Holland, and came to America 
about 1650, settling in New Jersey. Nearly a century 
ago, in 1803, Mr. Rockefeller's grandfather, Godfrey, 
married Lucy, one of the Averys of Groton, Conn., a 
family distinguished in the Revolutionary War, and 
which has since furnished to our country many able 
men and women. 

The picturesque home of the Averys, built in 1656, 
in the town of New London (now Groton), by Captain 
James Avery, was occupied by his descendants until it 
was destroyed by fire in 1894. A monument has been 
erected upon the site, with a bronze tablet containing a 
facsimile of the old home. 

The youngest son of Captain James Avery was Sam- 
uel, whose fine face looks out from the pages of the 
interesting Avery Genealogy, which Homer D. L. Sweet, 
of Syracuse, spent thirty years in writing. Samuel, 
an able and public-spirited man, married, in 1686, in 
Swanzey, Mass., Susannah Palmes, a direct descendant, 
through thirty-four generations, of Egbert, the first king 
of England. The name has always been retained in the 
family, Lucy Avery Rockefeller naming her youngest 
son Egbert. Her eldest son, William Avery, married 
Eliza Davison ; and of their six children, John Davison 
Rockefeller is the second child and eldest son. 

He was born in Richford, Tioga County, N.Y., July 
8, 1839. His father, William Avery, was a physician 







JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER. 



JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER. 359 

and business man as well. With great energy he 
cleared the forest, built a sawmill, loaned his money, 
and, like his noted son, knew how to overcome obstacles. 

The mother, Eliza Davison, was a woman of rare com- 
mon sense and executive ability. Self-poised in manner, 
charitable, persevering in whatever she attempted, she 
gave careful attention to the needs of her family, but 
did not forget that she had Christian duties outside her 
home. The devotion of Mr. Eockefeller to his mother 
as long as she lived was marked, and worthy of ex- 
ample. 

The Rockefeller home in Eichford was one of mutual 
work and helpfulness. The eldest child, Lucy, now 
dead, was less than two years older than John ; the 
third child, William, about two years younger ; Mary, 
Franklin and Frances, twins, each about two years 
younger than the others ; the last named died early. 
All were taught the value of labor and of economy. 

The eldest son, John, early took responsibility upon 
himself. Willing and glad to work, he cared . for the 
garden, milked the cows, and acquired the valuable 
habit of never wasting his time. When about nine 
years old he raised and sold turkeys, and instead of 
spending the money, probably his first earnings, saved 
it, and loaned it at seven per cent. It would be inter- 
esting to know if the lad ever dreamed then of being 
perhaps the richest man in America ? 

In 1853 the Rockefeller family moved to Cleveland, 
Ohio ; and John, then fourteen years of age, entered the 
high school. He was a studious boy, especially fond of 
mathematics and of music, and learned to play on the 
piano ; he was retiring in manner, and exemplary in 



360 JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER. 

conduct. When between fourteen and fifteen years of 
age, he joined the Erie Street Baptist Church of Cleve- 
land, Ohio, now known as the Euclid Avenue Baptist 
Church, where he has been from that time an earnest 
and most helpful worker in it. The boy of fifteen did 
not confine his work in the church to prayer-meetings 
and Sunday-school. There was a church debt, and it 
had to be paid. He began to solicit money, standing in 
the church-door as the people went out, ready to receive 
what each was willing to contribute. He gave also of 
his own as much as was possible ; thus learning early in 
life, not only to be generous, but to incite others to 
generosity. 

When about eighteen or nineteen, he was made one of 
the Board of Trustees of the church, which position he 
held till his absence from the city in the past few years 
prevented his serving. He has been the superintendent 
of the Sunday-school of the Euclid Avenue Baptist 
Church for about thirty years. When he had held the 
office for twenty-five years the Sunday-school celebrated 
the event by a reception for their leader. After ad- 
dresses and music, each one of the five hundred or more 
persons present shook hands with Mr. Rockefeller, and 
laid a flower on the table beside him. From the first 
he has won the love of the children from his sympathy, 
kindness, and his interest in their welfare. No picnic 
even would be satisfactory to them without his presence. 

After two years passed in the Cleveland High School, 
the school-year ending June, 1855, young Rockefeller 
took a summer course in the Commercial College, and at 
sixteen was ready to see what obstacles the business 
world presented to a boy. He found plenty of them. 



JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER. 361 

It was the old story of every place seeming to be full ; 
but he would not allow himself to be discouraged by 
continued refusals. He visited manufacturing establish- 
ments, stores, and shops, again and again, determined 
to find a position. 

He succeeded on the twenty-sixth day of September, 
1855, and became assistant bookkeeper in the forwarding 
and commission house of Hewitt & Tuttle. He did not 
know what pay he was to receive ; but he knew he had 
taken the first step towards success, — he had obtained 
work. At the end of the year, for the three months, 
October, November, and December, he received fifty 
dollars, — not quite four dollars a week. 

The next year he was paid twenty-five dollars a 
month, or three hundred dollars a year, and at the end 
of fifteen months, took the vacant position with the 
same firm, at five hundred dollars, as cashier and book- 
keeper, of a man who had been receiving a salary of 
two thousand dollars. 

Desirous of earning more, young Eockefeller after a 
time asked for eight hundred dollars as wages ; and, the 
firm declining to give over seven hundred dollars a year, 
the enterprising youth, not yet nineteen, decided to 
start in business for himself. He had industry and 
energy ; he was saving of both time and money ; he 
had faith in his ability to succeed, and the courage to 
try. He had managed to save about a thousand dollars ; 
and his father loaned him another thousand, on which 
he paid ten per cent interest, receiving the principal 
as a gift when he became twenty-one years of age. 
This certainly was a modest beginning for one of the 
founders of the Standard Oil Company. 



362 JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER. 

Having formed a partnership with Morris B. Clark, in 
1858, in produce commission and forwarding, the firm 
name became Clark & Rockefeller. The closest atten- 
tion was given to business. Mr. Rockefeller lived 
within his means, and worked early and late, finding 
little or no time for recreation or amusements, but 
always time for his accustomed work in the church. 
There was always some person in sickness or sorrow to 
be visited, some child to be brought into the Sunday- 
school, or some stranger to be invited to the prayer- 
meetings. 

The firm succeeded in business, and was continued 
with various partners for seven years, until the spring 
of 1865. During this time some parts of the country, 
especially Pennsylvania and Ohio, had become enthusi- 
astic over the finding of large quantities of oil through 
drilling wells. The Petroleum Age for December, 1881, 
gives a most interesting account of the first oil-well in 
this country, drilled at Titusville, on Oil Creek, a branch 
of the Alleghany River, in August, 1859. 

Petroleum had long been known, both in Europe and 
America, under various names. The Indians used it as 
a medicine, mixed it with paint to anoint themselves 
for war, or set fire at night to the oil that floated upon 
the surface of their creeks, making the illumination a 
part of their religious ceremonies. In Ohio, in 1819, 
when, in boring for salt, springs of petroleum were 
found, Professor Hildreth of Marietta wrote that the 
oil was used in lamps in workshops, and believed it 
would be "a valuable article for lighting the street- 
lamps in the future cities of Ohio." But forty years 
went by before the first oil-well was drilled, when men 



JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER. 363 

became almost as excited as in the rush to California 
for gold in 1849. 

Several refineries were started in Cleveland to prepare 
the crude oil for illuminating purposes. Mr. Rocke- 
feller, the young commission merchant, like his father 
a keen observer of men and things, as early as 1860, 
the year after the first well was drilled, helped to 
establish an oil-refining business under the firm name 
of Andrews, Clark, & Co. 

The business increased so rapidly that Mr. Rocke- 
feller sold his interest in the commission house in 1865, 
and with Mr. Samuel Andrews bought out their asso- 
ciates in the refining business, and established the firm 
of Rockefeller & Andrews, the latter having charge of 
the practical details. 

Mr. Rockefeller was then less than twenty-six years 
old ; but an exceptional opportunity had presented itself, 
and a young man of exceptional ability was ready for 
the opportunity. A good and cheap illuminator was a 
world-wide necessity ; and it required brain, and system, 
and rare business ability to produce the best product, 
and send it to all nations. 

The brother of Mr. Rockefeller, William, entered 
into the partnership ; and a new firm was established, 
under the name of William Rockefeller & Co. The 
necessity of a business house in New York for the sale 
of their products soon became apparent, and all parties 
were united in the firm of Rockefeller & Co. 

In 1867 Mr. Henry M. Flagler, well known in con- 
nection with his improvements in St. Augustine, Fla., 
was taken into the company, which became Rockefeller, 
Andrews, & Flagler. Three years later, in 1870, the 



36-4 JOHN I). ROCKEFELLER. 

Standard Cil Company of Ohio was established with 
a capital of $1,000,000, Mr. Rockefeller being made 
president. He was also made president of the National 
Refiners' Association. 

He was now thirty-one years old, far-seeing, self- 
centred, qniet and calm in manner, but untiring in 
work, and comprehensive in his grasp of business. The 
determination which had won a position for him in 
youth, even though it brought him but four dollars a 
week, the confidence in his ability, integrity, and sound 
judgment, which made the banks willing to lend him 
money, or men willing to invest their capital in his 
enterprise, made him a power in the business world 
thus early in life. 

Amid all his business and his church work, he had 
found time to form another partnership, the wisest and 
best of all. In the same high school with him for two 
years was a young girl near his own age, Laura C. Spel- 
man, a bright scholar, refined and sensible. 

Her father was a merchant, a Representative in the 
Legislature of Ohio, an earnest helper in the church, 
in temperance, and in all that lifts the world upward. 
He was the friend of the slave ; and the Spelman home 
was one of the restful stations on that " underground 
railroad" to which so many colored men and women 
owe their freedom. He was an active member for years 
of Plymouth Congregational Church in Cleveland, and 
later of Dr. Buddington's church in Brooklyn, and of 
the Broadway Tabernacle, New York, under Dr. Wm. 
M. Taylor. He died in New York City, Oct. 10, 1881. 

Mrs. Spelman, the mother, was also a devoted Chris- 
tian. She now lives, at the age of eighty-six, with her 



JOHN L>. ROCKEFELLER. 365 

daughter, grateful, as she says, for life's beautiful sun- 
set. She is loved by everybody, and her sweet face and 
voice would be sadly missed. She retains all her facul- 
ties, and has as deep an interest as ever in all religious, 
philanthropic, and political affairs. 

The Spelman ancestors are English. Sir Henry Spel- 
man, knighted by King James I., died in 1641, and lies 
buried in Westminster Abbey. Henry S., the third son 
of Sir Henry, and first of the name in America, came to 
Jamestown, Va., in 1609, and was killed by the Indians. 
Richard Spelman, born in Danbury, England, in 1665, 
came to Middletown, Conn., in 1700, and died in 1750. 
Laura's grandfather, Samuel, was the fourth in line from 
Richard. He was one of the pioneers in Ohio, moving 
thither from Granville, Mass. Her father, Harvey B. 
Spelman, was born in a log cabin in Rootstown, Ohio. 
Her mother's family came also from Massachusetts, from 
the town of Blanford ; and her father and mother met 
and were married in Ohio. 

Laura Spelman w r as a member of the first graduating 
class of the Cleveland High School, and has always 
retained the deepest interest in her classmates. After 
graduating, and spending some time in a boarding- 
school at the East, she taught very successfully for five 
years in the Cleveland public schools, being assistant 
in one of the large grammar schools. 

At the age of twenty-five Mr. Rockefeller married 
Miss Spelman, Sept. 8, 1864. Disliking display or ex- 
travagance, fond of books, a wise adviser in her home, 
a leader for many years of the infant department in 
the Sunday-school, like her father a worker for temper- 
ance and in all philanthropic movements, Mrs. Rocke- 



366 JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER. 

feller has been an example to the rich, and a friend and 
helper to the poor. Comparatively few men and women 
can be intrusted with millions, and make the best use 
of the money. With Mr. Rockefeller's married life thus 
happily and wisely begun, business activities went on 
as before, perchance with less wear of body and mind. 
It was, of course, impossible to organize and carry for- 
ward a great business without anxiety and care. 

In Cleave's " Biographical Cyclopaedia of Cuyahoga 
County," it is stated that, in 1872, two years after the 
organization of the Standard Oil Company, " nearly the 
entire refining interest of Cleveland, and other interests 
in KeAV York and the oil-regions, were combined in this 
company [the Standard Oil], the capital stock of which 
was raised to two and a half millions, and its business 
reached in one year over twenty-five million dollars, 
— the largest company of the kind in the world. The 
New York establishment was enlarged in its refining 
departments; large tracts of land were purchased, and 
fine warehouses erected for the storage of petroleum ; 
a considerable number of iron cars were procured, and 
the business of transporting oil entered upon; interests 
were purchased in oil-pipes in the producing regions. 

"Works were erected for the manufacture of barrels, 
paints, and glue, and everything used in the manufacture 
or shipment of oil. The works had a capacity of distil- 
ling twenty-nine thousand barrels of crude oil per day, 
and from thirty-five hundred to four thousand men were 
employed in the various departments. The cooperage 
factory, the largest in the world, turned out nine thou- 
sand barrels a day, which consumed over two hundred 
thousand staves and headings, the product of from fif- 
teen to twenty acres of selected oak." 



JOHN 1). ROCKEFELLER. 3G7 

Ten years after this time, in 1882, the Standard Oil 
Trust was formed, with a capital of $70,000,000, after- 
wards increased to $95,000,000, which in a few years 
became possessed of large oil-producing interests, and 
of the stock of the companies controlling the greater 
part of the refining of petroleum in this country. 

Ten years later, in 1892, the Supreme Court of Ohio 
having declared the Trust to be illegal, it was dissolved, 
and the business is now conducted by separate com- 
panies. In each of these Mr. Rockefeller is a share- 
holder. 

Mr. Rockefeller has proved himself a remarkable or- 
ganizer. His associates have been able men; and his 
vast business has been so systematized, and the lead- 
ers of departments held responsible, that it is man- 
aged with comparative ease. 

The Standard Oil Companies own hundreds of thou- 
sands of acres of oil-lands, and wells, refineries, and 
many thousand miles of pipe-lines throughout the United 
States. They have business houses in the principal 
cities of the Old World as well as the New, and carry 
their oil in their own great oil-steamships abroad as 
easily as in their pipe-lines to the American seaboard. 
They control the greater part of the petroleum business 
of this country, and export much of the oil used abroad. 
They employ from forty to fifty thousand men in this 
great industry, many of whom have remained with the 
companies for twenty or thirty years. It is said that 
strikes are unknown among them. 

When it is stated, as in the last United States Cen- 
sus reports, that the production of crude petroleum in 
this country is about thirty-five million barrels a year, 



368 JOHN I). ROCKEFELLER. 

the capital invested in the production $114,000,000, 
and the value of the exports of petroleum in various 
forms amounts to nearly $50,000,000 a year, the vast- 
ness of the business is apparent. 

With such power in their hands, instead of selling 
their product at high rates, they have kept oil at such 
low prices that the poorest all over the world have been 
enabled to buy and use it. 

Mr. Rockefeller has not confined his business interests 
to the Standard Oil Company. He owns iron-mines 
and land in various States ; he owns a dozen or more 
immense vessels on the lakes, besides being largely in- 
terested in other steamship lines on both the ocean and 
the great lakes ; he has investments in several railroads, 
and is connected with many other industrial enterprises. 

With all these different lines of business, and being 
necessarily a very busy man, he never seems hurried or 
worried. His manner is always kindly and considerate. 
He is a good talker, an equally good listener, and 
gathers knowledge from every source. Meeting the best 
educators of the country, coming in contact with leading 
business and professional men as well, and having trav- 
elled abroad and in his own country, Mr. Eockefeller 
has become a man of wide and varied intelligence. In 
physique he is of medium height, light hair turning 
gray, blue eyes, and pleasant face. 

He is a lover of trees, never allowing one to be cut 
.down on his grounds unless necessity demands it, fond 
of flowers, knows the birds by their song or plumage, 
and never tires of the beauties of nature. 

He is as courteous to a servant as to a millionnaire, is 
social and genial, and enjoys the pleasantry of bright 



JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER. 369 

conversation. He has great power of concentration, is 
very systematic in business and also in his every-day 
life, allotting certain hours to work, and other hours to 
exercise, the bicycle being one of his chief out-door 
pleasures. He is fond of animals, and owns several 
valuable horses. A great Saint Bernard dog, white and 
yellow, called "Laddie," was for years the pet of the 
household and the admiration of friends. When re- 
cently killed accidentally by an electric wire, the dog 
was carefully buried, and the grave covered with 
myrtle. A pretty stone, a foot and a half high, cut in 
imitation of the trunk of an oak-tree, at whose base 
fern-leaves cluster, marks the spot, with the words 
" Our dog Laddie ; died, 1895," carved upon a tiny 
slab. 

It may be comparatively easy to do great deeds, but 
the little deeds of thoughtfulness and love for the dumb 
creatures who have loved us show the real beauty and 
refinement of character. 

Mr. Rockefeller belongs to few social organizations, 
his church work and his home-life sufficing. He is a 
member of the New England Society, the Union League 
Club of New York, and of the Empire State Sons of the 
Kevolution, as his ancestors, both on his father's and 
mother's side, were in the Revolutionary War. 

His home is a very happy one. Into it have been 
born five children, — Bessie, Alice, who died early, Alta, 
Edith, and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. 

Bessie is married to Charles A. Strong, Associate Pro- 
fessor of Psychology in Chicago University, a graduate 
of both the University of Rochester and Harvard, and 
has been a student at the Universities of Berlin and 



370 JOHN D. ItOCKEFELLER. 

Paris. He is a son of the Rev. Dr. Augustus H. Strong, 
President of Rochester Theological Seminary. 

Edith is married to Harold F. McCormick of Chi- 
cago, a graduate of Princeton, and son of the late 
Cyrus H. McCormick, whose invention of the reaper 
has been a great blessing to the world. Mr. McCormick 
gave generously of his millions after he had acquired 
wealth. 

John D. Rockefeller, Jr., is at Brown University, and 
will probably be associated with his father in business, 
for which he has shown much aptitude. 

The children have all been reared with the good 
sense and Christian teaching that are the foundations 
of the best homes. They have dressed simply, lived 
without display, been active in hospital, Sunday-school, 
and other good works, and found their pleasures in 
music, in which all the family are especially skilled, 
and in reading. They enjoy out-door life, skating in 
winter, and rowing, walking, and riding in the sum- 
mer; but there is no lavish use of money for their 
pleasures. 

The daughters know how to sew, and have made 
many garments for poor children. They have been 
taught the useful things of home-life, and often cook 
delicacies for the sick. They have found out in their 
youth that the highest living is not for self. A recent 
gift from Miss Alta Rockefeller is $1,200 annually to 
sustain an Italian day-nursery in the eastern part of 
Cleveland. This summer, 1896, about fifty little people, 
two years old and upwards, enjoyed a picnic in the 
grounds of their benefactor. Mrs. Rockefeller's mother 
and sister, Miss Lucy M. Spelman, a cultivated and 



JOHN D. BOCKEFELLEB. 371 

philanthropic woman, are the other members of the 
Rockefeller family. 

Besides Mr. Rockefeller's summer home in Cleveland, 
he has another with about one thousand acres of land at 
Pocantico Hills, near Tarrytown on the Hudson. The 
place is picturesque and historic, made doubly interest- 
ing through the legends of Washington Irving. From 
the summit of Kaakoote Mountain the views are of rare 
beauty. Sleepy Hollow and the grave of Irving are not 
far distant. The winter home in New York City is a 
large brick house, with brown-stone front, near Fifth 
Avenue, furnished richly but not showily, containing 
some choice paintings and a fine library. 

Mr. Rockefeller will be long remembered as a remark- 
able financier and the founder of a great organization, 
but he will be remembered longest and honored most as 
a remarkable giver. We have many rich men in Amer- 
ica, but not all are great givers; not all have learned 
that it is really more blessed to give than to receive; 
not all remember that we go through life but once, with 
its opportunities to brighten the lives about us, and to 
help to bear the burdens of others. 

Mr. Rockefeller began to give very early in life, and 
for the last forty years has steadily increased his giving 
as his wealth has increased. Always reticent about his 
gifts, it is impossible to learn how much he has given 
or for what purposes. Of necessity some gifts become 
public, such as his latest to Vassar College of $ 100,000, 
a like amount to Rochester University and Theological 
Seminary, and the same, it is believed, to Spelman 
Seminary, at Atlanta, Ga., named as a memorial to his 
father-in-law. 



372 JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER. 

This is a school for colored women and girls, with 
preparatory, normal, musical, and industrial depart- 
ments. The institute opened with eleven pupils in 
1881, and now has 744, with nine buildings on fourteen 
acres of land. Dr. J. L. M. Curry said in his report 
for 1893, " In process of erection is the finest school 
building for normal purposes in the South, planned and 
constructed expressly with reference to the work of 
training teachers, which will cost over $50,000." In 
the industrial department, dress-cutting, sewing, cooking, 
and laundry work are taught. There is also a training- 
school for nurses. 

In a list of gifts for 1892, in the New York Tribune, 
Mr. Rockefeller's name appears in connection with Des 
Moines College, la., $25,000; Bucknell College, $10,- 
000; Shurtleff College $10,000; the Memorial Baptist 
Church in New York, erected through the efforts of Dr. 
Edward Judson in memory of his father, Dr. Adoniram 
Judson, $40,000 ; besides large amounts to Chicago 
University. It is probable that, aside from Chicago 
University, these were only a small proportion of his 
gifts during that year. 

An article in the press states that the recent anony- 
mous gift of $25,000 to help purchase the land for the 
site of Barnard College of Columbia University was from 
Mr. Rockefeller. He has also pledged $100,000 towards 
a million dollars, which are to be used for the construc- 
tion of model tenement houses for the poor in New 
York City. 

He has given largely to the Cleveland Young Men's 
Christian Association, and to Young Men's and Women's 
Christian Associations both in this country and abroad. 



JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER. 373 

He has built churches, given yearly large sums to for- 
eign and home missions, charity organization socie- 
ties, Indian associations, hospital work, fresh-air funds, 
libraries, kindergartens, Societies for the Prevention 
of Cruelty to Animals, for the education of the col- 
ored people at the South, and to the Woman's Christian 
Temperance Unions and to the National Temperance 
Society. He is a total abstainer, and no wine is 
ever upon his table. He does not use tobacco in any 
form. 

Mr. Rockefeller's private charities have been almost 
numberless. He has aided young men and women 
through college, sometimes by gift and sometimes by 
loan. He has provided the means for persons who were 
ill to go abroad or elsewhere for rest. He does not for- 
get, when his apples are gathered at Pocantico Hills, to 
send hundreds of barrels to the various charitable in- 
stitutions in and near New York, or, when one of his 
workingmen dies, to continue the support to his family 
while it is needed. Some of us become too busy to 
think of the little ways of doing good. It is said by 
those who know him best, that he gives more time to 
his benevolences and to their consideration than to 
his business affairs. He employs secretaries, whose 
time is given to the investigation of requests for aid, 
and attending to such cases as are favorably decided 
upon. 

Mr. Rockefeller's usual plan of giving is to pledge a 
certain sum on condition that others give, thus making 
them share in the blessings of benevolence. At one 
time he gave conditionally about $300,000, and it re- 
sulted in $1,700,000 being secured for some twenty or 



374 JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER. 

thirty institutions of learning in all parts of the coun- 
try. It is said by a friend, that on his pledge-book are 
hundreds of charities to which he gives regularly many 
thousand dollars each month. 

His greatest gift has been that of $7,425,000 to the 
University of Chicago. The first University of Chicago 
existed from 1858 to 1886, a period of twenty-eight 
years, and was discontinued from lack of funds. When 
the American Baptist Education Society, formed at 
AVashington, D.C., in May, 1888, held its first anniver- 
sary in Tremont Temple, Boston, it was resolved "to 
take immediate steps toward the founding of a well- 
equipped college in the city of Chicago." Mr. Rocke- 
feller had already become interested in founding such 
an institution, and made a subscription of $600,000 
toward an endowment fund, conditioned on the pledging 
by others of $400,000 before June 1, 1890. The Rev. 
T. AV. Goodspeed, and the Rev. F. T. Gates, Secretary of 
the Education Society, succeeded in raising this amount, 
and in addition a block and a half of ground as a site 
for the institution, valued at $125,000, given by Mr. 
Marshall Field of Chicago. Two and a half blocks were 
purchased for $282,500, making in all twenty-four 
acres, lying between the two great south parks of 
Chicago, Washington and Jackson, and fronting on the 
Midway Plaisance, a park connecting the other two. 
These parks contain a thousand acres. 

The university was incorporated in 1890, and Pro- 
fessor AA 7 illiam Rainey Harper of Yale University was 
elected President. The choice was an eminently wise 
one, a man of progressive ideas being needed for the 
great university. He had graduated at Muskingum Col- 



JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER. 375 

lege in 1870, taken his degree of Ph.D. at Yale in 1875, 
been Professor of Hebrew and the cognate languages 
at the Baptist Union Theological Seminary for seven 
years, Professor of the Semitic Languages at Yale for 
five years, and Woolsey Professor of Biblical Literature 
at Yale for two years, besides filling other positions of 
influence. 

In September, 1890, Mr. Rockefeller made a second 
subscription of $1,000,000 ; and, in accordance with the 
terms of this gift, the Theological Seminary was removed 
from Morgan Park to the University site, as the Divin- 
ity School of the University, and dormitories erected, 
and an academy of the University established at Morgan 
Park. 

The "University began the erection of its first build- 
ings Nov. 26, 1891. Mr. Henry Ives Cobb was chosen 
as the architect, and the English Gothic style is to be 
maintained throughout. The buildings are of blue Bed- 
ford stone, with red tiled roofs. The recitation build- 
ings, laboratories, chapel, museum, gymnasium, and 
library are the central features ; while the dormitories 
are arranged in quadrangles on the four corners. 

Mr. Rockefeller's third gift was made in February, 
1892, "one thousand five per cent bonds of the par 
value of one million dollars," for the further endow- 
ment of instruction. In December of the same year he 
gave an equal amount for endowment, " one thousand 
thousand-dollar five per cent bonds." In June, 1893 he 
gave $150,000 ; the next year, December, 1894, in cash, 
$675,000. On Jan. 1, 1896, another million, promis- 
ing two millions more on condition that the University 
should also raise two millions. Half of this sum was 



376 JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER. 

obtained at once through the gift of Miss Helen Culver. 
In her letter to the trustees of the University, she says, 
"The whole gift shall be devoted to the increase and 
spread of knowledge within the field of biological sci- 
ence. . . . Among the motives prompting this gift is 
the desire to carry out the ideas, and to honor the mem- 
ory, of Mr. Charles J. Hull, who was for a considerable 
time a member of the Board of Trustees of the old Uni- 
versity of Chicago." 

Miss Culver is a cousin of the late Mr. Hull, who 
left her his millions for philanthropic purposes. Their 
home for many years was the mansion since known as 
Hull House. 

The University of Chicago has been fortunate in 
other gifts. Mr. S. A. Kent of Chicago gave the Kent 
Chemical Laboratory, costing $235,000, opened Jan. 
1, 1894. The Ryerson Physical Laboratory, costing 
$225,000, opened July 2, J 894, was the gift of Mr. 
Martin A. Ryerson, as a memorial to his father. Mrs. 
Caroline Haskell gave $100,000 for the Haskell Oriental 
Museum, as a memorial of her husband, Mr. Frederick 
Haskell. There will be rooms for Egyptian, Babylonian, 
Greek, Hebrew, and other collections. Mr. George C. 
Walker, $130,000 for the Walker Museum for geological 
and anthropological specimens ; Mr. Charles T. Yerkes, 
nearly a half million for the Yerkes Observatory and 
forty-inch telescope ; Mrs. N. S. Foster, Mrs. Henrietta 
Snell, Mrs. Mary Beecher, and Mrs. Elizabeth G. Kelley 
have each given $50,000, or more, for dormitories. It 
is expected that half a million will be realized from the 
estate of William B. Ogden for "The Ogden (graduate) 
School of Science." The first payment has amounted 



JOHN I). ROCKEFELLER. 377 

to half that sum. Considerably over $10,000,000 have 
been given to the University. The total endowment is 
over $6,000,000. 

The University opened its doors to students on Oct. 
1, 1892, in Cobb Lecture Hall, given by Mr. Silas B. 
Cobb of Chicago, and costing $150,000. The num- 
ber of students during the first year exceeded nine 
hundred. The professors have been chosen with great 
care, and number among them some very distinguished 
men, from both the Old World and the New. The Uni- 
versity of Chicago is co-educational, which is matter for 
congratulation. Its courses are open on equal terms to 
men and women, with the same teachers, the same 
studies, and the same diplomas. "Three of the deans 
are women,''' says Grace Gilruth Rigby in Peterson's 
Magazine for February, 1896, "and half a dozen women 
are members of its faculty. They instruct men as well 
as women, and in this particular it differs from most 
co-educational schools." 

The University has some unique features. Instead of 
the usual college year beginning in September, the year 
is divided into four quarters, beginning respectively on 
the first day of July, October, January, and April, and 
continuing twelve weeks each, with a recess of one week 
between the close of each quarter and the beginning of 
the next. Degrees are conferred the last week of every 
quarter. The summer quarter, which was at first an 
experiment, has proved so successful that it is now an 
established feature. 

The instructor takes his vacation in any quarter, or 
may take two vacations of six weeks each. The student 
may absent himself for a term or more, and take up 



378 JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER. 

the work where he left off, or he may attend all the 
quarters, and thus shorten his college course. Much 
attention is given to University Extension work, and 
proper preparatory work is obtained through the affilia- 
tion of academies with the University. Instruction is 
also given by the University through correspondence 
with those who wish to pursue preparatory or college 
studies. 

" Chicago is, as far as I am aware," writes the late 
Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen in the Cosmopolitan for April, 
1893, " the first institution which, by the appointment of 
a permanent salaried university extension faculty, has 
formally charged itself with a responsibility for the out- 
side public. This is a great step, and one of tremendous 
consequence." 

A non-resident student is expected to matriculate at 
the University, and usually spends the first year in resi- 
dence. Non-resident work is accepted for only one-third 
of the work required for a degree. 

The University has eighty regular fellowships and 
scholarships, besides several special fellowships. 

The institution, according to Robert Herrick, in Scrib- 
ner's Magazine for October, 1895, seems to have the 
spirit of its founder. " Two college settlements in the 
hard districts of Chicago," he writes, "are supported 
and manned by the students. . . . The classes and 
clubs of the settlements show that the college stu- 
dents feel the impossibility of an academic life that 
lives solely to itself. On the philanthropic commit- 
tee, and as teachers in the settlement classes, men 
and women, instructors and students, work side by 
side. The interest in sociological studies, which is 



JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER. 379 

commoner at Chicago than elsewhere, stimulates this 
modern activity in college life." 

The University of Chicago has been successful from 
the first. In 1895 it numbered 1,265 students, of whom 
493 were in the graduate schools, most of them hav- 
ing already received their bachelor's degree at other 
colleges. In 1896 there are over 1,900 students. The 
possibilities of the university are almost unlimited. 

Dr. Albert Shaw writes in the Review of Reviews for 
February, 1893, " No rich man's recognition of his op- 
portunity to serve society in his own lifetime has ever 
produced results so mature and so extensive in so very 
short a time as Mr. John D. Rockefeller's recent gifts to 
the Chicago University." 

The New York Sun for July 4, 1896, gives Mr. Rocke- 
feller the following well-deserved praise : " Mr. John 
D. Rockefeller has paid his first visit to the University 
of Chicago, which was built up and endowed by his 
magnificent gifts. The millions he has bestowed on 
that institution make him one of the very greatest of 
private contributors to the foundation of a school of 
learning in the whole history of the world. He has 
given the money, moreover, in his lifetime, and thus 
differs from nearly all others of the most notable 
founders and endowers of colleges. 

"By so giving, too, he has distinguished himself from 
the great mass of all those who have made large bene- 
factions for public uses. He has taken the millions 
from his rapidly accumulating fortune ; and he has made 
the gifts quietly, modestly, and without the least seek- 
ing for popular applause, or to win the conspicuous 
manifestations of honor their munificence could easily 



380 JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER. 

have obtained for him. The reason for this remarkable 
peculiarity of Mr. Rockefeller as a public benefactor is 
that, being a deeply religious man, he has made his 
gifts as an obligation of religious duty, as it seems to 
him." 

Mr. Rockefeller's latest gift, of $600,000, was made 
to the people of Cleveland, Ohio, when that city cele- 
brated her one hundredth birthday, July 22, 1896. The 
gift was two hundred and seventy-six acres of land of 
great natural beauty, to complete the park system of 
the city. For this land Mr. Rockefeller paid $600,000. 
The land is already worth a million dollars, and will be 
worth many times that amount in the years to come. 

When announcing Mr. Rockefeller's munificent gift 
to the city, Mr. J. G. W. Cowles, president of the 
Chamber of Commerce, said of the giver : " His mod- 
esty is equal to his liberality, and he is not here to share 
with us this celebration. The streams of his benevo- 
lence flow largely in hidden channels, unseen and un- 
known to men ; but when he founds a university in 
Chicago, or gives a beautiful park to Cleveland, with 
native forests and shady groves, rocky ravines, sloping 
hillsides and level valleys, cascades and running brook 
and still pools of water, all close by our homes, open 
and easy of access to all our people, such deeds cannot 
be hid — they belong to the public and to history, as 
the gift itself is for the people and for posterity." 

The Centennial gift has caused great rejoicing and 
gratitude, and will be a blessing forever to the whole 
people, but especially to those whose daily work keeps 
them away from the fresh air and the sunshine. 

A day or two after the gift had been received, a large 



JOHN D. KOCKEFELLEE. 08I 

number of Cleveland's prominent citizens visited the 
giver at his home at Forest Hill, to express to him the 
thanks of the city. After the address of gratitude, Mr. 
Rockefeller responded with much feeling. 

" This is our Centennial year," he said. " The city 
of Cleveland has grown to great proportions, and has pros- 
pered far beyond anything any of us had anticipated. 
What will be said by those who will come after us when 
a hundred years hence this city celebrates its second 
Centennial anniversary, and reference is made to you, 
gentlemen, and to me ? Will it be said that this or 
that man has accumulated great treasures ? No ; all 
that will be forgotten. The question will be, What did 
we do with our treasures ? Did we, or did we not, use 
them to help our fellow-man ? This will be forever 
remembered." 

After referring to his early school-life in the city, and 
efforts to find employment, he told how, needing a little 
money to engage in business, and in the " innocence of 
his youth and inexperience " supposing almost any of 
his business friends would indorse his note for the 
amount needed, he visited one after another; and, said 
Mr. Rockefeller, " each one of them had the most excel- 
lent reasons for refusing ! " 

Finally he determined to try the bankers, and called 
upon a man whom the city delights to honor, Mr. T. P. 
Handy. The banker received the young man kihdl} r , 
invited him to be seated, asked a few questions, and 
then loaned him $2,000, " a large amount for me to 
have all at one time," said Mr. Rockefeller. 

Mr. Rockefeller is still in middle life, with, it is 
hoped, many years before him in which to carry out his 



382 JOHN J). ROCKEFELLER. 

great projects of benevolence. He is as modest and 
gentle in manner, as unostentatious and as kind in 
heart, as when he had no millions to give away. He is 
never harsh, seems to have complete self-control, and 
has not forgotten to be grateful to the men who be- 
friended and trusted him in his early business life. 

His success may be attributed in part to industry, 
energy, economy, and good sense. He loved his work, 
and had the courage to battle with difficulties. He had 
steadiness of character, the ability to command the con- 
fidence of business men from the beginning, and gave 
close and careful attention to the matters intrusted to 
him. 

Mr. Rockefeller will be remembered, not so much 
because he accumulated millions, but because he gave 
away millions, thereby doing great good, and setting 
a noble example. 



A'*